When an explosion killed three L.A. County sheriff’s deputies last month, Mike Fratantoni thought about 1857.
A horse thief named Juan Flores broke out of San Quentin State Prison, joined a posse that called itself Las Manillas — the handcuffs — and headed south toward Southern California. They robbed stores along the way and murdered a German shopkeeper in San Juan Capistrano. Los Angeles County Sheriff James R. Barton was warned about them but ignored the danger. He and his men were ambushed. Four were killed — Barton, Deputy Charles Daly and constables Charles Baker and William Little. The spot, near the interchange where State Route 133 and the 405 Freeway meet in Irvine, is now called Barton Mound.
Orange County was still a part of L.A. County then, the population was just over 11,000, California was a newly minted state, and the Mexican period was giving way to the Wild West.
“They all died alone with no help coming,” said Fratantoni, the Sheriff’s Department’s staff historian. “Today, you know your partner is coming to help you. People say the job’s dangerous now — it’s never not been dangerous.”
So as Sheriff Robert Luna prepared to hold a news conference hours after the accident at a department training facility in East L.A. took the lives of Dets. Joshua Kelley-Eklund, Victor Lemus and William Osborn, Fratantoni sent over notes about what happened to Barton and his men. That’s how Luna was able to tell the public that the latest line-of-duty deaths to befall the department happened on its deadliest day in more than 160 years, a line quickly repeated by media across the country.
Fratantoni describes himself as the “default button” whenever someone has a question about the Sheriff’s Department’s past, whether it’s a colleague or the public, whether it’s about the positive or the scandalous. He can tell you why female deputies stopped wearing caps (blame the popularity of beehive hairdos in the 1960s) and reveal why longtime Sheriff Eugene Biscailuz was a pioneer in trying to rehabilitate addicts (his father was an alcoholic).
It’s a job the Long Island native has officially held for a decade. He assumed the position with the blessing of then-Sheriff Jim McDonnell to tap into a passion Fratantoni had dabbled in on his own almost from the moment he joined the department in 1999.
“You can’t talk about L.A. County history without us,” Fratantoni said when we met at the Hall of Justice. Outside, the flags remained at half-staff in honor of the dead detectives. He was taking me on a tour of the building’s basement museum, which showcased the histories of the L.A. County Sheriff’s Department, district attorney’s office and coroner. “We’ve been there from Day 1. We were here before the Board of Supervisors. We were here before LAPD. We’ve never closed. We’ve survived it all.”
“We check with Mike on everything,” Luna told me in a phone interview. Last year, the sheriff joined Fratantoni and other current and retired Sheriff’s Department members for the dedication of a plaque to commemorate the 1857 Barton Mound massacre. “You get 10 minutes with him, and wow.”
I was able to get two hours.
Fratantoni is burly but soft-spoken, a trace of a New York accent lingering in his by-the-books cadence. All around us were books, poster boards and newspaper headlines of criminals that Angelenos still remember and those long forgotten, people such as Winnie Ruth Judd, who murdered two friends in Phoenix in 1931 then traveled to Los Angeles by train with their bodies in trunks.
We passed through a row of original L.A. County jail cells that were brought down piece by piece from their original location on the 10th floor of the Hall of Justice. He pointed out a display case of makeshift weapons, tattoo needles and fake IDs created by inmates over the department’s 175 years. I stared too long at a black jacket and AC/DC hat worn by the Night Stalker — serial killer Richard Ramirez.
Fratantoni shows off vintage items used for illegal gambling.
(Luke Johnson / Los Angeles Times)
The museum receives free rent from L.A. County but is otherwise funded and maintained by the Sheriffs’ Relief Foundation and the dollar a month pulled from the paychecks of Sheriff’s Department employees who sign up to support — “We don’t want to be a burden,” Fratantoni explained. It’s not open to the general public, but he frequently hosts deputies, prosecutors, law students and even school field trips.
“The kids come and love this one for some reason,” he said with a chuckle as we passed a narcotics display. “Not my favorite one.”
Fratantoni never rushed me and turned every question I had into a short story that never felt like a lecture. He frequently apologized for random artifacts strewn around — plaques, movie posters, a biography of mobster Mickey Cohen — or displays not lit to his liking. “Am I putting you to sleep yet?” he joked at one point.
The 45-year-old is more than a curator or nerdy archivist. Luna, like his predecessors Alex Villanueva and McDonnell, has entrusted Fratantoni to not just help preserve the department’s history but also imprint its importance on the men and women who are its present and future.
“I have always been a fan of history,” said Luna, who has organized lunchtime lectures about the department and civil rights. For Black History Month in February, Fratantoni spoke about the troubles faced by deputies William Abbott and John Brady, who in 1954 became the department’s first integrated patrol unit.
The recriminations against Abbott, who was Black, and Brady didn’t come from within but rather the residents in West Hollywood they served. “I believe it’s important to teach our deputies where we’ve been and some of the challenges we’ve faced. You can’t help but to want to listen to his stories,” Luna said of Fratantoni.
“Mike is just phenomenal,” said Deputy Graciela Medrano, a 25-year-veteran who was also at the museum the day I visited. A black ribbon stretched across her badge — a sign of mourning, law enforcement style. “I’ll ask him about cases that happened when I was just starting, and he immediately knows what I’m talking about. He makes us all appreciate our department more.”
Every year, Fratantoni speaks to the latest class of recruits about the department’s history. “They know it’s been around but nothing else. So I share photos, I tell stories. And I tell them, ‘You’re getting a torch passed to you, and you’re going to run the next leg.’ You can see their reactions — our history gives them a sense of purpose.”
He’ll also attend community events with other deputies in vintage uniforms or old department cars. “Someone will see it and say, ‘That’s my granddad’s car’ and smile. We can have conversations with the public we otherwise wouldn’t be able to.”
Fratantoni was supposed to focus this year on the department’s 175th anniversary. Another goal was to seek out an interview with Shirley MacLaine, one of the last surviving queens of the Sheriff’s Championship Rodeo, an annual event that used to fill up the Memorial Coliseum and attract Hollywood A-listers.
But 2025 got in the way. We spoke a week before the burials of Osborn and Kelley-Eklund (the services for Lemus have yet to be announced). Fratantoni also sits on the committee charged with putting names on the Los Angeles County Peace Officers’ Memorial.
“I don’t like doing it, and I hope I don’t have to fill out paperwork for it ever again, but if that’s what I have to do, I’m honored to be a part of it,” he said. “I hold it close to my heart.”
Fratantoni in front of a section of the museum that highlights the history of the L.A. County district attorney’s office.
(Luke Johnson / Los Angeles Times)
Even the work commemorating what happened during the Barton Mound massacre remains unfinished. The victims were buried at the old City Cemetery downtown but were moved to Rosedale Cemetery in Mid-City in 1914. No one bothered to mark their new graves, which were lost until researchers discovered them a few years ago. Fratantoni and others are fundraising for new tombstones for their slain predecessors.
He mentioned Daly’s story: Born in Ireland. Came to California for the Gold Rush. Became a blacksmith — he put the shoes on the horses that Barton and his constables were going to use to pursue Las Manillas. A strong, able man whom Barton deputized so he could join them on the day they would all die.
“It’s sad to see people who lost their life be forgotten,” Fratantoni said. “That’s just…”
The historian tasked with talking shook his head in silence.
In April of 2006, I watched a posse of politicians gather at Skid Row’s Midnight Mission to introduce, with great fanfare and unbridled confidence, a 10-year plan to end homelessness in Los Angeles.
That didn’t work out so well.
Twelve years later, in his 2018 State of the City address, Mayor Eric Garcetti made a full-throated vow to quit fooling around and get the job done.
Los Angeles knows how to weather a crisis — or two or three. Angelenos are tapping into that resilience, striving to build a city for everyone.
“We are here to end homelessness,” he said.
Mission not accomplished.
We have a habit of setting lofty goals and making grand promises in Los Angeles and in California.
That’s not necessarily a bad thing. Better to have politicians and experts who study the pressing issues of the day and go out on a limb rather than shrug their shoulders.
“It’s hard to do anything if you don’t have a vision,” said Jessica Bremner, a Cal State L.A. urban geography professor. Transit, housing and infrastructure needs won’t materialize without that vision, she added. “Nothing will move.”
Agreed. And all of us, not just politicians, want to believe there’s a better version of our community — a brighter future.
But there is a big difference between a vision and a hallucination, and we’ve had some of both in recent years.
Here’s a sampling:
A mobile phone user looks at an earthquake warning application. After the Northridge quake, the state passed a law requiring seismic upgrades of hospitals by 2030. As of 2023, nearly two-thirds had yet to complete the required improvements.
(Richard Vogel / Associated Press)
In 2022, California set a goal of eliminating the sale of gas-powered vehicles after 2035 — which would dramatically reduce greenhouse emissions — and reaching carbon neutrality by 2045.
After the 1994 Northridge earthquake, the state did more than set a goal. It passed a law requiring hospitals to upgrade seismic safety by 2030.
Los Angeles, under Garcetti, championed Vision Zero in 2015. The goal? Eliminate traffic deaths by 2025. Not reduce, but eliminate.
Steve Lopez
Steve Lopez is a California native who has been a Los Angeles Times columnist since 2001. He has won more than a dozen national journalism awards and is a four-time Pulitzer finalist.
In 2020, the city embraced SmartLA 2028, a plan to reduce reliance on fossil fuels and gas-powered vehicles and build “a data-driven connected city, which addresses the digital divide and brings fresh ideas, including tele-health, clean tech and a switch to mass transit.”
In 2021, the California Master Plan for Aging set “five bold goals” to increase affordable housing and improve health, caregiving and economic security for older adults and those with disabilities by 2030.
In anticipation of L.A.’s hosting of the 2028 Summer Olympics and Paralympics, Metro introduced its “Twenty-eight by ‘28” initiative in 2018, outlining more than two dozen transit objectives.
The DTLA 2040 plan, adopted by the city in 2023, would add 70,000 housing units and 55,000 jobs over the next 15 years.
So how’s it all going?
The good news: There’s been a lot of progress.
The bad news: Where to begin?
Surely you’ll fall over backward when I tell you that funding shortages, politics, evolving priorities, lack of coordination, haphazard and disjointed planning, and less than stellar leadership have stymied progress on many fronts.
On homelessness, thousands have been housed and helped thanks to big initiatives and voter-approved resources. But as an observer once described it, we’ve been managing rather than solving the crisis and essentially bailing a leaky boat with a teaspoon. And now the agency at the helm is in disarray.
People experiencing homelessness pack their tents and belongings during the cleanup of an encampment on Wilshire Boulevard in downtown Los Angeles.
(Etienne Laurent / For The Times)
On climate change, California deserves a big pat on the back for at least acknowledging the crisis and responding with big ideas. But the Trump administration, which is likely to hold steady up to and beyond the point at which Mar-a-Lago is underwater, has all but declared war on the Golden State’s good intentions, eliminating funding for key projects and challenging the state’s authority.
The U.S. Supreme Court has sided with Trump, Congress and fossil fuel companies in opposing the state’s ambitions. Meanwhile, a grim analysis last year, which can’t be blamed on Trump, said the state would have to triple the pace of progress to reach its 2030 greenhouse gas reduction target.
As for the law requiring seismic upgrades of hospitals by 2030, as of 2023, nearly two-thirds had yet to complete the required improvements and many had asked for amendments and extensions.
L.A.’s Vision Zero, meanwhile, which promised the redesign of high-accident locations and multiple other safety upgrades for pedestrians, cyclists and motorists, has been a singular embarrassment.
Rather than an elimination of traffic deaths, the number has surged, and an audit released earlier this year serves as an indictment of local leadership. It cited lack of accountability along with “conflicts of personality, lack of total buy-in for implementation, disagreements over how the program should be administered.”
“Incredibly disappointing,” said Michael Manville, a UCLA professor of urban planning. “The city remains incredibly dangerous for cyclists and pedestrians.”
Manville didn’t have very high grades, either, for Metro’s 28×28 foray.
“It’s a joke at this point,” he said, although even though he noted that some progress is undeniable, citing in particular the expected completion of the Purple Line extension to the Westside in time for the Olympics.
One morning in June, I stood on Van Nuys Boulevard in Pacoima with L.A. City Councilwoman Monica Rodriguez. She was looking to the north, in the direction of an empty promise.
“This is the home of the future San Fernando Valley Light Rail,” Rodriguez said. “It was supposed to be one of the 28 by 28, and we’re now looking at probably 2031 to 2032 for its completion … in a community that has a majority dependence … on public transit.”
We also visited the site of a proposed Sylmar fire station for which there was a groundbreaking ceremony about two decades ago. Rodriguez said with the adjacent hills turning brown as fire season approaches, Sylmar is long overdue for the station, but the city is hobbled by a massive budget deficit.
“Now I’ve just got to get the money to build it,” Rodriguez said.
An image from video shows the aftermath of a traffic collision involving three vehicles on the southbound lanes of the 405 Freeway near Wilshire Boulevard. Former Mayor Eric Garcetti championed Vision Zero in 2015. The goal? Eliminate traffic deaths by 2025.
(KTLA)
Sometimes it seems as if the big goals are designed to redirect our attention from the failures of daily governance. Sure, there’s a 10-year wait to get your ruptured sidewalk fixed, but flying taxis are in the works for the Olympics.
And one convenient feature of long-term goals is that when 2035 or 2045 rolls around, few may remember who made the promises, or even recall what was promised.
In Professor Bremner’s vision of a rosier L.A. future, there would be more buses and trains on the lines that serve the Cal State L.A. transit station. She told me she talks to her students about the relationship between climate change and the car culture, and then watches them hustle after night classes to catch a bus that runs on 30-minute intervals or a train that rolls in once an hour.
As for the other big promises I mentioned, SmartLA 2028 lays out dozens of laudable but perhaps overly ambitious goals — “Los Angeles residents will experience an improved quality of life by leveraging technology to meet urban challenges. No longer the ‘car capital of the world’, residents will choose how they wish to get around LA, using a single, digital payment platform, with choices like renovated Metro rail and bus systems or micro transit choices, such as on-demand LANow shuttles or dockless bicycles.” But in the 50-page strategy document, the word “challenges” is mentioned quite a bit, and I worry that this particular reference could be the kiss of death:
“City of Los Angeles departments have varying funding sources, missions, and directives, which can inhibit unified, citywide Smart City technology initiatives.”
It’s a little too soon to know whether the DTLA 2040 goals will rank as vision or hallucination, but downtown is the logical place for high-density residential development and construction cranes are already on the job. As for the Master Plan for Aging, there’s been progress but also uncertainty about steady funding streams, particularly given current state budget miseries, and there’s no guarantee the plan will be prioritized by future governors.
“Goals are critical,” said Mark Gold, director of water scarcity solutions at the Natural Resources Defense Council. “But they need to be followed up with implementation plans, with budgets, funding mechanisms, milestones and metrics.”
“That is nowhere close,” said Gold, but two other goals might be within reach. One is to have 70% of L.A.’s water locally sourced by 2035, the other is for 80% of county water to be local by 2045, using increased stormwater capture, recycled wastewater, groundwater remediation and conservation.
When he ran Heal the Bay, Gold implemented an annual report card for ocean water quality at various beaches. Maybe we ought to use the same system every time a politician takes a bow for introducing a bold, far-reaching goal.
Without the measuring stick, Gold said, “you end up looking back and saying, ‘remember when we were going to do this and that and it never happened?’ You have to continuously revisit and grade yourself on how you’re doing.”
Plans for the 2028 Olympics and Paralympics are linked to a fleet of buses to transport people to and from venues like SoFi Stadium to avoid a traffic meltdown. The plan includes a $2-billion ask of the Trump administration to lease 2,700 buses to join Metro’s fleet of about 2,400.
(Deborah Netburn / Los Angeles Times)
While it’s true, Manville said, that “L.A. seems to be better at kicking off grand plans than seeing them through, that’s not unique to Los Angeles.”
He cited “Abundance” as one of several recent books making the case that “lots of cities in blue states can’t seem to get out of their own way.”
The failures of virtuous Democrats are indeed on full display in California and beyond. But the other side of the aisle is not without its own sins, beginning with cult-like denial of climate change and, speaking of empty promises, undying devotion to a man who said he would end the war in Ukraine before he took office and bring down grocery prices on Day One.
Would you rather live in a state crazy enough to still think it can build a bullet train and outlaw carbon, or in one of the many hurricane-battered states crazy enough to think this is a swell time to get rid of FEMA?
If you’re reaching for the stars, making it to the moon isn’t a bad start.
On Thursday, he signed an executive order to address “endemic vagrancy” and end “crime and disorder on our streets.” He called for the use of “civil commitments” to get those who suffer from mental illness or addiction into “humane treatment.”
Steve Lopez
Steve Lopez is a California native who has been a Los Angeles Times columnist since 2001. He has won more than a dozen national journalism awards and is a four-time Pulitzer finalist.
This comes after last year’s U.S. Supreme Court ruling making it legal for cities to punish people for being homeless, even if they have nowhere to go.
There’s some truth in what he says, and California’s record on housing and homelessness is ripe for criticism. I’ve watched too many people suffer from addiction and mental illness and asked why the help is so slow to arrive. But I also know there are no simple answers for either crisis, and bluster is no substitute for desperately needed resources.
Like a lot of what Trump does, this is another case of grandstanding. In the meantime, the Washington Post reported Thursday that the “Trump administration has slashed more than $1 billion in COVID-era grants administered by the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration and is proposing to slash hundreds of millions more in agency grants.”
Wendell Blassingame sits at the entrance to San Julian Park in downtown Los Angeles in 2023.
(Wally Skalij/Los Angeles Times)
As it happens, I was in the middle of a column on the latest Los Angeles homeless count when news of Trump’s executive order broke. I had just spent time with two homeless women to hear about their predicaments, and none of what Trump is proposing comes close to addressing their needs, which are tragically commonplace.
Namely, they’re living in poverty and can’t afford a place to live.
In his executive order, Trump said that “nearly two-thirds of homeless individuals report having used hard drugs … in their lifetimes. An equally large share of homeless individuals reported suffering from mental health conditions.”
I don’t know where he got those numbers, but truth and accuracy are not hallmarks of this administration.
No doubt, addiction and mental illness are significant factors, and more intervention is needed.
But that’s more complicated than he thinks, especially given the practical and legal issues surrounding coercive treatment — and it’s not going to solve the problem.
When the latest homeless count in Los Angeles was released, a slight decline from a year ago was regarded by many as a positive sign. But when Eli Veitzer of Jewish Family Service L.A. dug into the numbers, he found something both unsurprising and deeply disturbing.
The number of homeless people 65 and older hadn’t gone down. It had surged, in both the city and county of Los Angeles.
“This isn’t new this year. It’s a trend over the last couple of years,” said Veitzer, whose nonprofit provides meals, housing assistance and various other services to clients. “It’s meaningful, and it’s real, and these people are at the highest risk of mortality while they’re on the streets.”
The numbers from the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority showed a 3.4% decrease in the total homeless population in the city, but a 17.6% increase among those 65 and older. The county numbers showed a 3.99% decrease overall, but an 8.59% increase in the 65 and older group.
In the city, the increase over two years was from 3,427 in 2023 to 4,680 this year — up 37%.
Reliable research has shown that among older adults who become homeless, the primary reason is the combination of poverty and high housing costs, rather than mental illness or addiction.
A man smokes inside a tent on Los Angeles’ Skid Row in March 2020.
(Marcio Jose Sanchez / Associated Press)
“They or their spouse lost their job, they or their spouse got sick, their marriage broke up or their spouse or parent died,” Dr. Margot Kushel of UC San Francisco’s Homelessness and Housing Initiative was telling me several hours before Trump’s executive order was issued.
Her team’s landmark study, released two years ago (and covered by my colleague Anita Chabria), found that nearly half the state’s homeless residents were 50 and older, and that participants in the study reported a median monthly household income of $960.
“The results … confirm that far too many Californians experience homelessness because they cannot afford housing,” Kushel said at the time.
Among the older population, Veitzer said, the jump in homelessness comes against the backdrop of federal and local budget cuts that will make it harder to reverse the trend. And harder for nonprofits, which rely in part on public funding, to keep providing group meals, home-delivered meals, transportation, social services and housing support.
“Every provider I’ve talked to in the city of L.A. is cutting meal programs,” Veitzer said. “We’re going to have to close two of our 13 meal sites, and last year we closed three. We used to have 16, and now we’re down to 11.”
On Wednesday, I went to one of the sites that’s still up and running on Santa Monica Boulevard, just west of the 405, and met Jane Jefferies, 69. She told me she’s been camping in her vehicle since February when living with her brother became impossible for various reasons. She now pulls into a Safe Parking L.A. lot each night to bed down.
Jefferies said she collects about $1,400 a month in Social Security, which isn’t enough to get her into an apartment. At the senior center, she uses her own equipment to make buttons that she sells on the Venice boardwalk, where she can make up to $200 on a good weekend.
But that’s still not enough to cover the cost of housing, she told me, and she’s given up on government help.
“All the funding has been cut, and I don’t know if it’s because a lot of the city and state funding is subsidized by the federal government. We all know Trump hates California,” she said.
As Veitzer put it: “There’s nowhere near enough low-income senior housing in L.A. County. Wait lists open up periodically,” with far more applicants than housing units. “And then they close.”
His agency delivers a daily meal to Vancie Davis, 73, who lives in a van at Penmar Park in Venice. Her next-door neighbor is her son, Thomas Williamson, 51, who lives in his car.
Davis was in the front seat of the van when I arrived, hugging her dog, Heart. Her left leg was amputated below the knee two years ago because of an infection, she told me.
Davis said she and another son were living in a trailer in Oregon, but the owner shut off the utilities and changed the locks. She said she reached out to Williamson, who told her, “I’ve got a van for you, so you’ll have a place to live, but it’s going to be rough. And it is. It’s very, very rough.”
I’ve heard so many variations of stories like these over the years, I’ve lost count.
The magnitude that exists in the wealthiest nation in history is a disgrace, and a sad commentary on an economic system and public policy that have served to widen, rather than narrow, the inequity gap.
On Thursday, Trump’s executive order on homelessness grabbed headlines but will do nothing for Jane Jefferies or Vancie Davis and for thousands like them. We know the interventions that can work, Kushel said, but with deep cuts in the works, we’re moving in the wrong direction.
Davis’ son Thomas told Times photographer Genaro Molina about another person who lives in a vehicle and has been a neighbor of theirs in the parking lot.
I took a week of vacation to relax, clear my head and stop obsessing over depressing news.
I hear frequently from people who say that, for their peace of mind, they’re tuning out the news altogether, so I tried it for a couple of days. Opened a book. Walked the dog.
Steve Lopez
Steve Lopez is a California native who has been a Los Angeles Times columnist since 2001. He has won more than a dozen national journalism awards and is a four-time Pulitzer finalist.
But I’m in the news business, and I felt like a hypocrite, so I kept sneaking peeks. As it turns out, that wasn’t healthy.
You can’t follow a single 24-hour news cycle without questioning your own sanity.
In which the federal government has made it a priority to arrest tamale vendors and fire meteorologists?
President Trump holds a gavel after signing the “One Big Beautiful Bill Act” at the White House in Washington, D.C., on July 4.
(Brendan Smialowski / Pool / AFP via Getty Images)
In which the Social Security Administration sends us emails fawning over the president and making false claims, the White House jokes and memes about immigration raids and the Department of Homeland Security triggers a trolling war with social media posts about its version of national heritage?
I have a weekly goal of avoiding alcoholic beverages on Mondays, Tuesdays and Thursdays, but in this political culture, what chance do I have?
With lots of time to practice, I picked up my guitar, but events of the last few weeks continued to haunt me.
The “Big Beautiful Bill” that Trump signed into law on July 4 will add trillions to the national debt, heap tax breaks on those who need them least and rip healthcare coverage away from the neediest. As a result, L.A. County’s health services are anticipating federal cutbacks in the hundreds of millions of dollars.
“We can’t survive this big a cut,” Barbara Ferrer, L.A. County’s head of public health, told the Times for a story by Rebecca Ellis and Niamh Ordner. She added: “I’ve been around a long time. I’ve never actually seen this much disdain for public health.”
Dr. Jonathan LoPresti, who worked at County/USC for decades and is an associate professor of clinical medicine at the Keck School of Medicine at USC, is alarmed. He sent me an a copy of an opinion piece he’s writing, which includes a warning that county hospitals could “again be overrun with the poor … and homeless, leading to further hospital and ER overcrowding, delayed discharges and reduction in routine health maintenance … That could lead to an increase in community TB cases and more serious complications of treatable disease, as well as deaths.”
He added this:
“How many public deaths are people willing to accept?”
There is no limit, judging by crystal clear signals from Washington.
I think we can all agree that historic rainstorms, hurricanes and wildfires in the United States and the rest of the world will continue to kill thousands.
So I swam laps, thinking that having my head under might help, but it only made me feeling like I was drowning.
Hundreds of probationary workers at the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration have been fired, and the fulltime staff will be trimmed by 2,000.
These cuts, and the elimination of federal support for scientific research, are damaging in obvious ways. But when I asked UCLA professor Alex Hall what’s most disturbing, here’s what the director of the Center for Climate Science had to say:
“I feel like the thing that’s most chilling is the way the word ‘climate’ has become a dirty word.”
In other words, the politicization of the subject — Trump and supporters insist human-caused climate change is either exaggerated or a hoax — has created a form of censorship.
I may be a little biased on this topic. My daughter just graduated from college with a degree in earth science. What she and thousands like her are being told, essentially, is, “Good for you, but the planet’s health is neither a concern nor a priority. If you’re looking for work, the Border Patrol is hiring, and cryptocurrency might be a good career path.”
So there you have it. That’s how I spent my summer vacation, failing miserably in my attempt to look the other way.
But all was not lost.
I played pickleball a couple of times, in Glendale and Los Feliz, and suffered no major injuries. I took my beagle Philly to Rosie’s Dog Beach in Long Beach and watched him race around like the happiest hound in the world. And, borrowing from Trump’s penchant for cutbacks, I’ve trimmed my list of no-alcohol days from three to two.
Federal agents on horseback with a white steed in the middle trotted through a soccer field. Others dressed like they were ready for Fallujah walked across lawns that just minutes earlier hosted a kid’s summer camp. Humvees complete with gun turrets parked on Wilshire Boulevard.
A Black Hawk helicopter buzzed above.
It was meant to be a show of force. It was more of a farce.
The park was mostly empty thanks to social media posts that had been warning Los Angeles about the coming incursion since Sunday. A furious Mayor Karen Bass arrived, got on the phone with U.S. Border Patrol Chief Gregory Bovino — who was strolling around while a photographer took glam shots — and told him to pull back. Activists showed up instead of the regular crowd to laugh at and film la migra and cuss them outta there.
It was like the climactic scene in “Blazing Saddles,” when incompetent villain Hedley Lamarr tried to invade a small town with the baddest of hombres besides him only to find a Potemkin village. The Non-Battle of MacArthur Park even had a “cowboy” (those quote marks are getting some serious “air” time as I write this)With his straw cowboy bat and rifle slung over his shoulder, Assistant Chief Border Patrol Agent David Kim seemed to be channeling his inner Alex Villanueva, the ex-L.A. County sheriff who wore Stetsons anywhere and everywhere in urban L.A. because he thought that showed power.
This was the Battle of the Photo Op. Written in D.C. and paid for by taxpayers.
For the past 30 days, President Donald Trump has laid siege to L.A. like a potentate trying to quash a far-away rebel province. Over 1,600 people detained, citizens and noncitizens alike. A parade of his lackeys — Department of Homeland Security head Kristi Noem, Vice President JD Vance, border policy advisor Tom Homan — parachuted in to lecture L.A. about how out of control it is and vow retribution. California’s senior U.S. senator, Alex Padilla, briefly handcuffed for daring to question Noem during a press conference.
Trump and his troupe keep squawking about getting “the worst of the worst,” but they’re mostly not. This operation doesn’t seem to make much of a distinction between snatching an immigrant with a criminal record or a guy armed with a stockpile of tamales he’s trying to sell to make a living.
What the city is weathering is supposed to be a warning to all other immigrant-friendly municipalities across the country: submit, or else.
Well, L.A. chose the something else. And Trump and his goons are getting more and more angry — and reckless.
Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem speaks to the National Guard before their lunch at the Wilshire Federal Building in Los Angeles on June 12.
(Luke Johnson / Los Angeles Times)
People are scared, sure — even terrified. That’s part of Trump’s strategy, along with making life so miserable that he hopes Angelenos will turn on each other. Instead, they’re uniting and hunkering down for more. Support networks and neighborhood watchdog groups are blooming across the region. Everyone with a smartphone and a social media account is now a reporter, capturing la migra at its worst and letting the world know what’s really going on. Lawsuits are being filed. More and more average citizens are joining the resistance.
What’s happening reminds me of the concluding line Lisa Simpson sang when Springfield Nuclear Power Plant workers went on strike against Mr. Burns and his heavies:
They may have the strength, but we have the power.
I get it, America: You think what’s happening in L.A. will never come to you. And you sort of like seeing the big, bad City of Angels getting smacked around with promises of even worse things to come. There’s a reason sports fans chant “Beat L.A.” and not “Beat Salt Lake City” or even New York.
But what happened yesterday at MacArthur Park is a microcosm of Trump’s vision for the rest of the country: a massive show of nada that does absolutely nothing to make life better for Americans. A gigantic waste of money. Spectacle over substance. Venom for anyone who dares speak out.
That should concern anyone who cares about a functioning democracy. Including L.A. haters.
The last month of raids across Southern California has shown that when the going gets tough, Trump goes for the easy. Sure, the Department of Homeland Security and its toxic alphabet soup of agencies participating in Trump’s deportation deluge are churning out social media posts featuring grainy photos of some of the people they’ve caught along with their alleged crimes. But that’s a way to mask the reality that these people taken in raids are mostly not criminals. A Times analysis of data obtained by the Deportation Data Project at UC Berkeley Law found that nearly 70% of those arrested by Immigration and Customs Enforcement from June 1 through June 10 had no criminal convictions.
The sad irony about what happened yesterday in MacArthur Park is that if ever there was a place in L.A. that might have welcomed a helpful assist from the feds … it’s MacArthur Park.
As my fellow columnistaSteve Lopez has written about for years, it’s a jewel of a green space with serious problems that city officials have allowed to fester over the decades and has made it a no-go zone for many Angelenos. Gangs have long extorted businesses in the neighborhood and terrorized everyone else — including immigrants. Too many unhoused people pass through with nowhere else to go. Drug use is as prevalent as sunbathing: When I walked through it earlier this year on the way to Langer’s for lunch, I saw a man smoke a meth pipe within eyesight of an LAPD officer who didn’t even blink.
But this wasn’t about saving MacArthur Park from the bad guys. Instead, the deployment of masked troops in tactical gear showed Trump and his berserkers only care about optics, up to and including a man on horseback leading his fellow cavalry in a straight line while holding an American flag as colleagues whipped out their smartphones. The charade looked like something out of a Western movie — American military subjugating yet another Native American tribe.
Federal immigration agents near MacArthur Park on July 7.
(Carlin Stiehl / Los Angeles Times)
More is going to come, most likely worse. Trump’s Bloated Bullplop Bill has allocated $170 billion to immigration enforcement. Homan is relishing the idea of increasing the number of ICE agents from 5,000 to 15,000 — as if all that migra will improve the economy or make up for the rise in taxes and loss in Medicaid that millions of American citizens will suffer in order to support an agency whose increased budget will put it above the military of most of the world’s countries.
Are you paying attention yet, America?
After the MacArthur Park action, Trump’s disciples proclaimed victory. Bovino bragged to Fox News reporter Bill Melugin — the de facto media stenographer for Trump’s migra mission — that he told L.A. Mayor Karen Bass during their phone call, “Better get used to us now, ’cause this is going to be normal very soon. We will go anywhere, anytime we want in Los Angeles.” White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller went on Fox News later to thunder, “The Democrat Party’s objective is to flood the West with millions upon millions of illegals from the developing world” as footage of what happened earlier that day rolled next to him.
Big words from little men who act like they’re living some “Apocalypse Now” fantasy.
I preferred what L.A. councilmember Eunisses Hernandez — whose district encompasses MacArthur Park — said shortly after the sweep at a City Hall press conference, something as true as the sun rising in the east: “We are the canary in the coal mine. What you see happening at MacArthur Park is coming to you.”
Meanwhile, we are getting rid of medical researchers and weather forecasters, even as extreme and deadly weather events become more common.
Steve Lopez
Steve Lopez is a California native who has been a Los Angeles Times columnist since 2001. He has won more than a dozen national journalism awards and is a four-time Pulitzer finalist.
You would think — based on the priorities in President Trump’s budget, tax and policy bill approved last week — that immigration is the greatest threat to our health and security.
It’s not.
But billions of dollars have been added for border and ICE agents while billions more have been trimmed from medical, climate and weather-related resources.
On Monday morning, federal agents on horseback and in armored vehicles descended on MacArthur Park in a show of force. Children playing in the park were ushered to safer ground, Mayor Karen Bass said at a news conference.
“Frankly it is outrageous and un-American that we have federal armed vehicles in our parks when nothing is going on in our parks,” Bass said, adding that she didn’t know if anyone was even detained.
“It’s a political agenda of provoking fear and terror,” she said.
The event “looked like a staging for a TikTok video,” said City Council President Marqueece Harris-Dawson.
MacArthur Park has a sizable undocumented immigrant population, and a lot of big problems to tackle — homelessness, a wide-open drug trade and gang activity. On some days areas of the park were unusable for families. First responders rolled out on overdose calls, addicts took over an alley, and merchants struggled to stay open amid all the mayhem.
In December, people sit at the corner of Alvarado Street and Wilshire Boulevard, an area known for illegal drug use in the Westlake neighborhood.
(Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Times)
As I found last year over the course of several months on the ground, local officials waited too long and moved too slowly in response to the long-festering crisis.
But a silly military parade isn’t going to help, unless they actually were going after undocumented drug lords — but there was no immediate evidence of that.
If the federal government wanted to help, L.A. could use more support for housing, drug interdiction and treatment. It could use a more stable and equitable economy that’s not undermined by tariff uncertainties and the president’s taunts of trading partners.
As we know in California, countless industries rely on undocumented laborers. It’s an open secret, and has been for decades, not just in the Golden State but across the nation, and yet Washington has been unable to put together a sensible immigration reform package over the years.
That’s right. Trump threatened lackey GOP Congressman, ordering the spineless ninnies to pull their support.
Every time I see a helicopter now in L.A. — and as we know, they’re like mosquitoes up there — I wonder if Trump has sent in the Air Force, with bombers coming in behind them.
My colleague Rachel Uranga recently reported that “ICE has not released data on criminal records of detainees booked into its custody.” But nonpublic data from the Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank, “showed about 9 out of 10 had never been convicted of a violent or property crime, and 30% have no criminal record. The most frequent crimes are immigration and traffic offenses.”
It’s nothing to warrant the terrorizing of neighborhoods and communities, nothing to warrant armed, masked agents of unknown identities and agencies roaming our streets and nabbing workers at car washes, Home Depots and restaurants.
Federal immigration agents near MacArthur Park in the Westlake area on Monday.
(Carlin Stiehl / Los Angeles Times)
It’s almost as terrifying as several other real and existential threats:
An anti-vax crackpot is in charge of the nation’s healthcare and medical research system.
Some of the leading researchers in medicine and science are leaving the country in a trend that could end up being a catastrophic brain drain.
I got an email the other day from the Social Security Administration informing me the “(SSA) is celebrating the passage of the One Big, Beautiful Bill.” I thought it was a joke at first — a satirical take on the rise of an authoritarian regime.
Meteorologists say extreme weather events like the rainstorms that led to a river surge and killed dozens of children and adults in Texas’ Hill Country over the holiday weekend are going to become more common.
Florida had a record-tying number of hurricanes in 2024 with 11 of them, and $130 billion in damage.
Wildfires destroyed thousands of homes in Southern California last year and are becoming ever-more common around the world.
Temperatures in the Mediterranean Sea smashed records for June, and scientists are warning of dire impacts on sea life and food chains.
To the president and his minions, the crisis is overblown.
It’s fake news.
And the federal government can’t be distracted from its core mission.
The week is young, and there’s no telling which L.A. neighborhood will be invaded next.
The president of the United States, who seems to enjoy nothing more than playing the bully, is picking on Los Angeles. But L.A. Mayor Karen Bass, not known as a public brawler until recently, is ducking punches and throwing her own jabs and uppercuts.
She has accused President Trump of initiating the protests he condemned, and called Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem a liar for suggesting L.A. was a city of mayhem.
I had a conversation with her Tuesday about what it’s like to deal with a president like this one, but before we chatted, she stepped to the podium at City Hall, flanked by labor, business and faith leaders, and defended her turf again.
“This is essentially an all-out assault against Los Angeles,” Bass said, denouncing the U.S. Justice Department’s lawsuit accusing her and the City Council of hindering the battle against “a crisis of illegal immigration.” It’s a political stunt, Bass said several times, denying that the city’s sanctuary city protections are unlawful.
Steve Lopez
Steve Lopez is a California native who has been a Los Angeles Times columnist since 2001. He has won more than a dozen national journalism awards and is a four-time Pulitzer finalist.
“We know that Los Angeles is the test case,” Bass said. “And we will stand strong, and we do so because the people snatched off city streets and chased through parking lots are our neighbors, our family members, and they are Angelenos. Let me be clear. I won’t be intimidated.”
This has not been the best year of Bass’ political career. It began with the destruction of Pacific Palisades by a wildfire that started while Bass was out of town, and continued with the second-guessing of L.A.’s disaster preparedness and questions about who would lead the rebuilding effort.
Then came the arrival of federal agents and troops, with raids beginning June 6, and Bass started to find her footing by going against type.
“Her natural instinct is to be a coalition builder — to govern by consensus,” said Fernando Guerra, a political science professor at Loyola Marymount University. But that doesn’t work with Trump, “so she’s recalibrating and saying, you know, the only thing this guy understands is confrontation.”
Pomona College politics professor Sara Sadhwani said Trump is attacking “the heart and core of Los Angeles,” and there may be unintended consequences, given the way the president’s actions are unifying many Angelenos. “I think the vast majority of folks in Los Angeles, but also throughout the state, can agree that what’s happening now is not OK and runs counter to our values,” Sadhwani continued. “And Bass is showing incredibly strong leadership.”
President Trump shook hands with Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass after a fire briefing in Pacific Palisades on Jan. 24.
(Mark Schiefelbein / Associated Press)
Even a half dozen Republican state legislators have joined the opposition, sending a letter to Trump suggesting he focus on arresting actual criminals rather than going after people who make up an essential component of the economy.
As Sadhwani noted, Republican lawmakers for years have lamented federal overreach and argued in favor of state’s rights and local control. And yet the Trump Administration is set on telling California and Los Angeles how to govern themselves, most recently on sanctuary protections, despite court arguments that they’re protected under the 10th Amendment.
After Tuesday’s press conference, Bass retreated to her office and told me her support for immigrants began with her work as an activist in the 1970s.
“This is fundamentally who I am. But of course, having a blended family” also factors into her politics on immigration. “My ex-husband was a Chicano activist … I have other family members that are married to people from the Philippines, Korea, Japan. I have a Greek side to my family.”
When gathered, she said, her family “looks like the General Assembly of the United Nations.”
And that’s what Los Angeles looks like, with storylines that crisscross the globe and transcend borders.
“I don’t see anybody [here] anywhere calling for deportations, whereas you could imagine in some cities this would be a very divisive issue,” Bass said.
I told her I hear quite often from people asking: “What don’t you understand about the word illegal?” or from people arguing that their relatives waited and immigrated legally.
I understand those perspectives, I told Bass. But I also understand context — namely, the desire of people to seek better opportunities for their children, and the lure of doing so in a United States that relies upon immigrant labor and tacitly allows it while hypocritically condemning it.
While serving in Congress, Bass said, she witnessed the toll wrought by the separation of families along the border. She met people who “carried the trauma throughout their lives, the insecurity, the feeling of abandonment.”
At the very least, the mayor said, federal agents “should identify themselves and they also should have warrants, and they should stop randomly picking people up off the street. The original intent, remember, [was to go after] the hardened criminals. Where are the hardened criminals? They’re chasing them through parking lots at Home Depot? They’re washing cars? I don’t think so.”
U.S. Marines post guard at the Federal Building at the corner of Veteran Avenue and Wilshire Boulevard in Los Angeles on June 19.
(Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Times)
In fact, the vast majority of arrestees in Los Angeles have no criminal records.
As for the cost of the raids in L.A. — by an administration that made a vow to shrink government — Bass wanted to make a few points.
“You think about the young men and women in the National Guard. They leave their families, work, their school. For what?” she asked. “It’s a misuse of the troops. And the same thing with the Marines. They’re not trained to deal with anything happening on the street. They’re trained to fight to kill the enemy in foreign lands.”
While we were talking, Bass got an urgent call from her daughter, Yvette Lechuga, who works as senior administrative assistant at Mount St. Mary’s University. Lechuga said a woman was apprehended while getting off a shuttle.
“It seems like ICE grabbed our student,” Lechuga said.
Bass said her staff would look into it.
“We were on quasi-lockdown for a while,” Lechuga said.
Moreover, the Fourth of July means we’re in the heart of boating season. There are 4 million recreational boaters in California, according to the state Division of Boating and Waterways. There’s an average of 514 boating accidents a year. And July is the worst month.
I’ve been boating at Tahoe for 55 years, and on some water since I was a teen.
These are my basic rules for safety and enjoyment, at least in a vessel up to about 30 feet. My Tahoe boats mostly have been 22 to 24 feet.
For starters, if Lake Tahoe winds are already blowing at 10 mph and it’s not even noon, be smart. Don’t venture out in a recreational powerboat. The water’s likely to get much choppier in the afternoon.
If you’re out there and see white caps forming, head for shore.
If lots of sailboats show up, you don’t belong on the water with them. Get off.
And another thing: Don’t pay much attention to the manufacturer’s claim of how many people a boat will hold. Boat makers tend to exaggerate. If it says 10 people will fit, figure on maybe eight tops.
Sure, 10 may be able to squeeze aboard, but the extra weight causes the boat to ride deeper in the water and become more vulnerable to taking on water in heavy swells. That can lead to capsizing. And all those passengers squirming around makes driving more difficult because of the constantly changing weight balance.
But most important: Monitor the weather forecasts before you even get near the water.
Lake Tahoe is big and beautiful — 22 miles long and 12 miles wide, at 6,224 feet in the Sierra mountains. It holds enough water to cover all of California by 14 inches. Two-thirds of the lake is in California, one-third in Nevada.
Weather patterns vary. Scary winds and thunderstorms can be at one end of the lake, and calmer water and blue skies at the other.
Even on calm mornings, Lake Tahoe’s weather and boating conditions can turn hazardous quickly.
(Max Whittaker / For The Times)
My wincing at reports of the multi-fatality accident and many other boating mishaps that Saturday afternoon off the south and west shores stem from repeated references to all of it being caused by a sudden, unexpected storm.
The intensity of the storm may have been unexpected — north winds up to 45 mph, producing eight-foot waves. But winds had been forecast by the National Weather Service in the high teens and into the 20s. And that should have been enough warning for boaters: Stay off the water.
The person who made the most sense after the tragedy was Mary Laub, a retired financial analyst who lives in Minden, Nev., over the steep hill from South Lake Tahoe. She and her husband keep a 26-foot Regal cabin cruiser in Tahoe Keys on the south shore. And she habitually watches weather forecasts.
She had planned to go for a cruise that Saturday but dropped the idea after seeing the forecast.
“The afternoon winds pick up at Tahoe. If they’re approaching 10 [mph] before noon, I don’t go out,” she told me. “I saw that forecast and said, ‘No way.’
“If there’s any whisper of wind, I don’t go out. We’ve been caught out there before. I don’t take a chance.”
The people who died were in a practically new 27-foot Chris-Craft Launch, a high-end, gorgeous open-bow boat. It was the vessel’s third time on the water. Ten people were aboard, mostly in their 60s and 70s. They were relatives and lifelong friends, celebrating a woman’s 71st birthday. She was among the fatalities.
They were trying to return from popular Emerald Bay to their west side home in midafternoon when eight-foot swells swamped the boat, deadening the engine and capsizing the vessel off rocky Rubicon Point near D.L. Bliss State Park. They were tossed into the abnormally cold water and presumably drowned, perhaps paralyzed by hypothermia.
A mother and daughter in the party, both wearing life jackets, were rescued by a Washoe County sheriff’s team. Whether the others were wearing life jackets hadn’t been revealed as of this writing.
One four-person crew in a 24-foot open-bow MasterCraft grabbed their life jackets, wisely abandoned the boat and swam to shore. They scampered up rocky cliffs in their bare feet to safety. The boat was practically totaled.
I called meteorologist Dawn Johnson at the National Weather Service in Reno.
She said the forecast for that Saturday afternoon had been for winds up to 20 mph and gusts to “25 or so.”
There also was up to a 25% chance of thunderstorms. “If you have thunderstorms on the lake, make sure you get off the water,” Johnson said. “You have a higher risk of being struck by lightning on open water.”
There were strong winds Friday night, she recalled, but by 11 a.m. Saturday they had dropped to 5 to 10 mph. Then they picked up as forecast.
“We see winds gust at that magnitude multiple times a month, most likely in the afternoon,” she said. “Sustained winds reach 25 to 30 mph.”
But normally they produce waves of only 2 to 4 feet, she added. “We’re trying to figure out exactly what happened.”
Four-foot waves are a hurricane in my book.
And Mother Nature doesn’t care about a boater’s weekend plans.
The message was loud and clear when Netflix‘s Korean thriller “Squid Game” arrived in 2021. Imagining wealth and class disparity at the heart of a high-stakes competition, it featured cash-strapped contestants playing a series of children’s games to the death while uber-wealthy spectators bet on their odds of survival. The show’s masked elites watched the carnage from a luxe, concealed spectator box, chomping on cigars and chortling as player after player met a gruesome death. The Korean-language show became the streamer’s most watched series ever.
Comeuppance for the hideously affluent seemed imminent and likely at the hands of protagonist Seong Gi-hun (Lee Jung-jae). The winner of Season 1’s “Squid Game” deserved vengeance after surviving a series of horrific scenarios — a hopscotch-type match played on a fragile glass bridge above a deadly chasm, a red light-green light contest where players who moved at the wrong time were “eliminated” by machine gun fire. He watched as good people were killed by pink guards, other contestants and their own stupid actions.
But no. The last six “Squid Game” episodes, now streaming on Netflix, did something entirely unsatisfying. They veered from the prospect of timely, eat-the-rich vengeance porn to unflattering commentary about the rest of us, the other 99% who aren’t Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg or Jeff Bezos. What did we ever do to deserve a lethal game of double dutch with two giant mechanical children swinging a 10-ton metal rod in place of a jump rope? A lot, apparently.
“Squid Game” shows that under the right circumstances, regular folks are just as greedy and morally corrupt as the obscenely prosperous, no matter if their money problems stem from unforeseen medical bills, wanton gambling or generational poverty. Press the little guy or gal hard enough and they’re just as ruthless as the mogul that’s suppressing them.
The VIPs in “Squid Game” Season 3, who watch as the contestants trample one another.
(Dong-won Han / NohJu Han / Netflix)
Season 3 picks up exactly where 2 left off. Gi-hun, who’d found his way back in the clandestine gaming complex (situated inside a mountain on a remote island), is Player 456 again among a new round of contestants. He’d planned to infiltrate the operation from inside, staging a coup against the VIPs and Front Man (Lee Byung-hun) who run the games. But now it’s clear he’s failed. He’s cornered by guards, the players who fought alongside him are dead, and he’s thrown back in with the remaining players, many of whom survived because they’re the most craven of the group.
Free and fair elections are at the heart of every democracy, or so “Squid Game” reminds us each time the bedraggled players are asked for their vote regarding the next round: Continue to compete and thin the herd for a larger reward or stop and split their winnings with their fellow contestants? Majority rules, and each time the group opt to sacrifice their lives — and everyone else’s — in pursuit of money. Series creator Hwang Dong-hyuk has spoken about his dwindling faith in humanity as it relates to his concerns about South Korea’s democracy, and you’ll hear him loud and clear in Season 3: Voting is power, but look what happens when the population increasingly puts its own self-interest above that of the greater good. It’s a scenario that should be recognizable to Americans by now.
“Squid Game” Season 3 takes that idea to the extreme, and quite fearlessly, Hwang puts the series to bed without punishing the rich. Instead he dares to lay bare a truth that’s become all too apparent of late: Wealth wins over morality and money trumps accountability. Nice guys not only finish last, they wind up pulverized like everyone else below a certain tax bracket, no matter their dedication toward humanity.
The Korean show’s run has ended, but not before a finale that alludes to a Hollywood sequel. The episode, set in Los Angeles, shows a familiar scene. A down-and-out man is approached by a mysterious, well-dressed figure who uses a simple kid’s game to test his want of money against his tolerance for pain and humiliation.
Those who’ve watched “Squid Game” will recognize it as the beginning of Gi-hun’s journey, which ended with a sliver of redemption in an abyss of darkness. The mysterious figure appears to be a recruiter for a new, English-language “Squid Game.” She’s played by an A-list celebrity — Cate Blanchett — operating in a city renowned for its self-involvement and privilege. “Squid Game” has a whole new playing field.
For years in this columna, I have repeatedly posed a simple challenge to Archbishop José H. Gomez:
Stand up for Los Angeles, because L.A. needs you.
The head of the largest Catholic diocese in the United States has largely stood athwart the liberal city he’s supposed to minister since he assumed his seat in 2011 but especially since the COVID-19 pandemic. He has railed against “woke” culture and refused to meet with progressive Catholic groups. When the Dodgers in 2023 honored the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence, a drag troupe that wears nun’s habits while raising funds for the marginalized, he led a special Mass at the Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels that amounted to a public exorcism.
Most perplexingly, the Mexico-born archbishop stayed largely quiet as the Herod that’s Donald Trump promised to clamp down on legal immigration and deport people without legal status during his 2024 presidential run. As head of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops at the end of last decade, Gomez wrote and spoke movingly about the need to treat all immigrants with dignity and fix this country’s broken system once and for all. But his gradual turn to the right as archbishop has gone so far that the National Catholic Reporter, where I’m an occasional contributor, labeled him a “failed culture warrior” when they anointed him their Newsmaker for that year.
Gomez’s devolution was especially dispiriting because L.A. Catholic leaders have taught their American peers how to embrace Latino immigrants ever since Archbishop John Cantwell helped refugees from Mexico’s Cristero War resettle in the city in the 1920s. Clerical legends like Luis Olivares and Richard Estrada transformed La Placita Church near Olvera Street into a sanctuary for Central American immigrants during the 1980s and 1990s in the face of threats from the feds. Gomez’s predecessor, Cardinal Roger Mahony, long drew national attention for attacking anti-immigrant legislation during his sermons and marching alongside immigrant rights protesters, a cross to bear that Gomez never warmed up to.
Father Gregory Boyle of Homeboy Industries appeared in a viral video proclaiming the righteous, if well-worn, message that no human being is illegal, but also that “we stand with anybody who’s demonized or left out, or excluded, or seen as disposable … it’s kinda how we roll here.” His fellow Jesuit, Dolores Mission pastor Brendan Busse, was there with activists during a June 9 migra raid at a factory in the Garment District that saw SEIU California president David Huerta arrested for civil disobedience.
I especially admired Father Peter O’Reilly, who was a priest in the L.A. Archdiocese for 44 years before retiring in 2005. The 90-year-old cleric was at Gloria Molina Grand Park on June 8, the day protesters torched Waymo cars, just blocks away from the Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels. O’Reilly told a television station in his native Ireland afterward that it was important for him be there to let immigrants know “we were with them and for them.”
Gomez? The archbishop put out a weak-salsa statement around that time about how he was “troubled” by the raids. His Instagram account urged people a few days later to light a candle and pray for peace. That same day, Diocese of Orange Bishop Kevin Vann and his auxiliary bishops posted a letter condemning the raids, which they maintained “invoke our worst instincts” and “spread crippling fear and anxieties upon the hard-working, everyday faithful among us.”
You know things are upside-down in this world when O.C. is more down for immigrant rights than L.A.
Faith leaders lead a prayer vigil in Gloria Molina Grand Park on June 10 to stand in support of community members facing immigration raids in Los Angeles.
(Jason Armond / Los Angeles Times)
I wanted to blast Gomez last week but held back, praying that he might change for the better. So I’m happy to report he’s starting to.
On June 10, the same day he posted his Instagram call for prayer, the archbishop also attended an evening interfaith vigil along with Boyle, Busse and other faith leaders to tell a crowd of over 1,000 people, “Immigration is about more than politics — it is about us, the kind of people we want to be.” Gomez asked all parishes in the L.A. Archdiocese the following day to hold special Masses with L.A.’s current immigration troubles in mind. He led the lunchtime one in the cathedral, telling parishioners during his homily, “We want to go out and console our neighbors and strengthen their hearts and encourage them to keep the faith.”
Gomez saved his most stinging remarks for this Tuesday in his regular column for Angelus News, the archdiocese’s publication. While not able to resist a shot at the Biden administration, the soft-spoken prelate nevertheless said of Trump’s raids: “This is not policy, it is punishment, and it can only result in cruel and arbitrary outcomes.” Accompanying his thoughts was a photo of a young woman holding a sign that read, “Jesus was an Immigrant” in front of California Highway Patrol officers in riot gear.
“For him to show up was meaningful,” Busse said. Since Trump’s inauguration, Dolores Mission has hosted training for the rapid response networks that have alerted people about immigration raids. “But I hope there’s more. The diocese has a huge capacity for organizing, and I hope that his leadership can move people in a large way.”
Busse said the first instinct of too many religious leaders is “to step back into a place of safety” when controversy emerges. “But there’s also an invitation to be brave and courageous. What we need to do is step into the situation to bring the peace that we’re praying for.”
Joseph Tómas McKellar is executive director of PICO California, a faith-based community organizing network that co-sponsored the interfaith vigil last week where Gomez spoke. The nonprofit used to teach citizenship and English classes in the L.A. Archdiocese and McKellar remembered Gomez attending a gathering of social justice groups in Modesto in 2017 as an active participant “in these small group conversations.”
The PICO California head said Gomez’s recent reemergence from his years in the political wilderness “was deeply encouraging. … Our bishops and the leaders of our denominations have a special responsibility to exercise prophetic leadership. The prophets are the ones who denounce what is broken in this world, but also announce a different vision. I do see him more embracing more that call and that challenge to reflect.”
An archdiocese spokesperson said Gomez was unavailable for comment because he was at a retreat for the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops. Earlier this week , the group released a reflection declaring, “No one can turn a deaf ear to the palpable cries of anxiety and fear heard in communities throughout the country in the wake of a surge in immigration enforcement activities.”
I have no expectations that Archbishop Gomez’s politics will ever fully reflect L.A.’s progressive soul. He remains the only American bishop affiliated with the orthodox Opus Dei movement and sits on the ecclesiastical advisory board for the Napa Institute, an organization of rich Catholics that has labored mightily over the past decade to tilt the church rightward. Its co-founder, Orange County-based multimillionaire developer Tim Busch, wrote earlier this year with no irony that Trump’s administration “is the most Christian I’ve ever seen” and told The Times in 2023 that Gomez “is one of my closest advisors.”
But I’m glad Gomez is moving in the right direction, right when the city needs him the most. I continue to pray his voice gets bolder and stronger and that the region’s millions of Catholics — and all Angelenos, for that matter — follow the archbishop’s call to action to help immigrants while pushing him to do more.
I hope Gomez keeps in his heart what Busse told me near the end of our chat: “If the faith community doesn’t stand up when there’s a moral issue to stand up for, then I don’t know what happens.”
She was attending her first protest, driven to be seen with thousands of others at a “No Kings” demonstration Saturday morning in El Segundo, eager to make a statement.
But she was there for her father, as well.
The sign she held aloft as car horns honked in support said: “I’m speaking for those who can’t.”
Her father would have loved to join her, Jennifer told me. But with ICE raids in Los Angeles and arrests by the hundreds in recent days, her 55-year-old undocumented dad couldn’t afford to take the risk.
Steve Lopez
Steve Lopez is a California native who has been a Los Angeles Times columnist since 2001. He has won more than a dozen national journalism awards and is a four-time Pulitzer finalist.
Jennifer is 29. I hadn’t seen her in nearly 20 years, when I wrote about her father and visited her home in Inglewood to deliver $2,000 donated by readers who read his story.
Here’s the back story:
In December of 2005 I got a tip about a shooting in the front yard of an Inglewood home. Two men approached a landscaper and demanded money. He resisted, and in the tussle that ensued, a shot was fired.
Paramedics rushed the man to the emergency room at UCLA, where doctors determined that a bullet had just missed his heart and was lodged in his chest. Although doctors recommended he stay at least overnight for observation, he insisted he felt fine and needed to get back to work.
The landscaper, whom I referred to as Ray, insisted on leaving immediately. As he later explained to me, the Inglewood job was for a client who hired him to re-landscape the yard as a Christmas gift to his wife.
Ray was shot on Dec. 23.
Demonstrators at a “No Kings” event at Main Street and Imperial Highway in El Segundo on Saturday.
(Steve Lopez / Los Angeles Times)
He finished the job by Christmas.
I’ve been thinking about Ray since ICE agents began the crackdown ordered by President Trump, whose administration said its goal was to deport 3,000 people a day. Hundreds have been arrested in the Fashion District, at car washes and at building supply stores across Los Angeles.
That’s led to clashes between law enforcement and demonstrators, and to peaceful protests like the one along Imperial Highway and Main Street on Saturday in El Segundo.
I thought of Ray because Trump generally speaks of undocumented immigrants as monsters, and no doubt there are criminals among them.
But over the years, nearly all my encounters have been with the likes of Ray, who are an essential part of the workforce.
Yes, there are costs associated with undocumented immigrants, but benefits as well — they’ve been an essential part of the California economy for years. And among those eager to hire them — in the fields, in the hospitality industry, in slaughterhouses, in healthcare — are avid Trump supporters.
On Friday, I called Ray to see how he was doing.
“I’m worried about it,” he said, even though he has some protection.
Demonstrators at the “No Kings” event in El Segundo raise their signs, including one that read, “Real men don’t need parades.”
(Steve Lopez / Los Angeles Times)
Several years ago, an immigration attorney helped him get a permit to work, but the Trump administration has vowed to end temporary protected legal status for certain groups of immigrants.
“I see and hear about a lot of cases where they’re not respecting documents. People look Latino, and they get arrested,” said Ray, who is in the midst of a years-long process to upgrade his status.
Ray is still loading tools onto his truck and driving to landscaping, tree-trimming and irrigation jobs across L.A., as he’s done for more than 30 years. But he said he’s being extra careful.
A protester at a “No Kings” event in El Segundo prepares a sign on Saturday.
(Steve Lopez / Los Angeles Times)
“You know, like keeping an eye out everywhere and checking my telephone to see where checkpoints are,” he said.
Ray’s ex-wife has legal status, and all three of their children were born here and are U.S. citizens. The marriage ended and Ray has remarried, but he remains close to the three kids I met in the spring of 2006, when they were 9, 10 and 11.
The younger son, who is disabled, lives with Ray. His older son, a graphic designer, lives nearby. Jennifer, a job recruiter, lives next door and has been on edge in recent days.
“Even though he has permission to be here … it’s scary, and I wasn’t even letting him go to work,” Jennifer said. “On Monday I was getting into the shower and heard him loading up the truck.”
She ran outside to stop him, but he was already gone, so she called him and said, “Oh my God, you shouldn’t be going to work right now. It’s not safe.”
“No Kings” was the theme of the day during a demonstration in El Segundo on Saturday.
(Steve Lopez / Los Angeles Times)
Jennifer works from home but couldn’t concentrate that day. She used an app to track her father’s location and checked the latest information on ICE raids. So far, Ray has made it home safely each day, although Jennifer is hoping he slows down for a while.
Twenty years ago, when I wrote about Ray getting shot and his insistence on going back to work immediately, one of the readers who donated money — $1,000 — to him was one of his landscaping clients, Rohelle Erde. When I checked in with her this week to update her on Ray’s situation, she said her entire family came to the U.S. as immigrants to work hard and build a better life, and Ray did the same.
“He has been working and making money and helping people beautify their homes, creating beauty and order, and this must be so distressing,” Erde said. “The ugliness and disorder are exactly the opposite of what he represents.”
The evening before Saturday’s rally in El Segundo, Jennifer told me why she wanted to demonstrate:
“To show my face for those who can’t speak and to say we’re not all criminals, we’re all sticking together, we have each other’s backs,” she said. “The girl who takes care of my kids is undocumented and she’s scared to leave the house. I have a lot of friends and family in the same boat.”
Jennifer attended with her son, who’s 9 and told me he’s afraid his grandfather will be arrested and sent back to Mexico.
“He’s the age I was when you met me,” Jennifer said of her son.
She took in the crowd and said it was uplifting to see such a huge and diverse throng of people stand up, in peaceful protest, against authoritarianism and the militarization of the country.
Mother and son stood together, flashing their signs for passing motorists.
His said, “Families belong together.”
Jennifer told me that her father still has the bullet in his chest.
When U.S. Sen. Alex Padilla was forcibly removed from a news conference held by Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, it was almost as if Donald Trump’s most well-worn talking point came to life:
All Padilla did was identify himself and try to question Noem about the immigration raids across Southern California that have led to protests and terror. Instead, federal agents pushed the senator into a hallway, forced him to the ground and handcuffed him before he was released. He and Noem talked privately afterward, yet she claimed to reporters that Padilla “lung[ed]” at her despite them being far apart and video showing no evidence to back up her laughable assertion.
(The claim was in keeping with Noem’s pronouncements this week. On Tuesday, she accused Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum of encouraging violent protests in L.A. when the president actually called for calm.)
The manhandling of Padilla on Thursday and his subsequent depiction by conservatives as a modern-day Pancho Villa isn’t surprising one bit. Trashing people of Mexican heritage has been one of Trump’s most successful electoral planks — don’t forget that he kicked off his 2016 presidential campaigns by proclaiming Mexican immigrants to be “rapists” and drug smugglers — because he knows it works. You could be a newcomer from Jalisco, you could be someone whose ancestors put down roots before the Mayflower, it doesn’t matter: For centuries, the default stance in this country is to look at anyone with family ties to our neighbor to the south with skepticism, if not outright hate.
These anti-Mexican sentiments are why California voters passed a slew of xenophobic local and state measures in the 1980s and 1990s when the state’s demographics began to dramatically change. Conservative politicians and pundits alike claimed Mexico was trying to reclaim the American Southwest and called the conspiracy the “Reconquista,” after the centuries-long push by Spaniards to take back the Iberian Peninsula from the Moors during the Middle Ages.
A man holds a Mexican flag at the Metropolitan Detention Center in Los Angeles on June 8, 2025.
(Jason Armond / Los Angeles Times)
The echoes of that era continue to reverberate in MAGAland. It’s why Trump went on social media to describe L.A. as a city besieged by a “Migrant Invasion” when people began to rally against all the immigration raids that kicked off last week and led to his draconian deployment of the National Guard and Marines to L.A. as if we were Fallouja in the Iraq war. It’s what led the White House’s Instagram account Wednesday to share the image of a stern-looking Uncle Sam putting up a poster stating “Help your country … and yourself” above the slogan “Report All Foreign Invaders” and a telephone number for Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
It’s what led U.S. Atty. Bill Essayli to post a photo on his official social media account of SEIU California President David Huerta roughed up and in handcuffs after he was arrested for allegedly blocking the path of ICE agents trying to serve a search warrant on a factory in the Garment District. It’s why Texas Gov. Greg Abbott called in the National Guard before planned protests in San Antonio, one of the cradles of Latino political power in the United States and the home of the Alamo. It’s why there are reports that Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth wants to rename a naval ship honoring Chicano legend Cesar Chavez and has announced that the only U.S. military base named after a Latino, Ft. Cavazos in Texas, will drop its name.
And it’s what’s driving all the rabid responses to activists waving the Mexican flag. Vice President JD Vance described protesters as “insurrectionists carrying foreign flags” on social media. White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller — Trump’s longtime anti-immigrant Iago — described L.A. as “occupied territory.” The president slimed protesters as “animals” and “foreign enemies.” In an address to Army soldiers prescreened for looks and loyalty at Ft. Bragg in North Carolina this week, he vowed, “The only flag that will wave triumphant over the city of Los Angeles is the American flag.”
The undue obsession with a piece of red, green and white cloth betrays this deep-rooted fear by Americans that we Mexicans are fundamentally invaders.
And to some, that idea sure seems to be true. Latinos are now the largest minority group in the U.S., a plurality in California and nearly a majority in L.A. and L.A. County — and Mexicans make up the largest segment of all those populations by far.
The truth of this demographic Reconquista, as I’ve been writing for a quarter of a century, is far more mundane.
Lupe Padilla, mother of then-Los Angeles City Councilman and current U.S. Sen. Alex Padilla, wipes a tear away as they watch a video presentation of his career during his last City Council meeting in 2006.
(Gary Friedman / Los Angeles Times)
The so-called invading force of my generation assimilated to the point where our kids are named Brandon and Ashley in all sorts of spellings. The young adults and teenagers on the street wrapping themselves in the Mexican flag right now are chanting against ICE in English and blasting “They Not Like Us.” More than a few of the National Guard troops, police officers and Homeland Security officers those young Latino activists were heckling have Latino surnames on their uniforms, when they show any identification at all. Hell, enough Mexican Americans voted for Trump that they arguably swung the election to him.
Mexicans assimilate into the United States, a fact too many Americans will never believe no matter how many American flags we may wave. The best personification of this reality is Sen. Padilla.
When I met Padilla for lunch last year at my wife’s store in Santa Ana — in Calle Cuatro, the city’s historic Latino district, where now we can see the National Guard down the street blocking off a part of it — he struck me as the goody- two-shoes those who have worked with him have always portrayed him to be. In fact, that was always a progressive critique of him: He was too nice to properly stand up to the Trump administration.
That’s what makes Padilla’s ejection especially outrageous. He’s California’s senior California U.S. senator, someone with enough of a security clearance to be was in the same federal building where Noem was holding her press conference because he had a previous meeting with US Northern Command’s General Gregory Guillot. Tall, brown and deep-voiced, Padilla is immediately recognizable on Capitol Hill as one of a handful of Latino U.S. senators. He fought Noem’s nomination to became Homeland Security chief, so it makes no sense that she didn’t immediately recognize him.
Then again, Noem probably thought Padilla was just another Mexican.
Not anymore. If anything, conservatives should be more afraid of Mexicans now than ever. Because if a nice Mexican such as Alex Padilla could be fed up with hate against us enough to get tossed around by the feds in the name of preserving democracy, anyone can.
SAN DIEGO — Dave Roberts wasn’t pretending to be calm. He was calm.
None of this was new to him, the depleted starting rotation, the fatigued bullpen, the division rivals within striking distance.
Under similar circumstances in past seasons, Roberts pointed out, “We’ve gotten to the other side.”
The Dodgers won a World Series like this last year. They have won the National League West in 12 of the last 13 seasons.
They usually reach “the other side.”
So rather than panic, Roberts waits. He waits for the end of a particularly difficult 26-game stretch, and when Shohei Ohtani, Tyler Glasnow and Blake Snell can pitch again.
Roberts won’t say this publicly, but the Dodgers just have to tread water until they are whole.
They claimed a 5-2 victory over the San Diego Padres on Wednesday to win for the second time in their three-game series at Petco Park, preserving their lead in the NL West.
The Dodgers host the second-place San Francisco Giants in a three-game series that starts Friday and the third-place Padres in a four-game series that opens Monday, after which their schedule will become noticeably softer.
Their remaining opponents before the All-Star break: the Washington Nationals, Colorado Rockies, Kansas City Royals, Chicago White Sox, Houston Astros and Milwaukee Brewers. The post-All-Star Game schedule is extremely manageable as well.
Provided a couple of their starting pitchers return as anticipated, the Dodgers should be able to not just win their division but also secure a top-two seed in the NL, which would give them a first-round bye in the playoffs. As it is, the Dodgers are 41-27, only ½ game behind the Chicago Cubs, the league’s current No. 2 team.
Dodgers players have taken on Roberts’ understated confidence and make-do-with-what-you-have approach, which explains how the team has survived a 19-game stretch in which every opponent had a winning record. The Dodgers were 10-9 in those games.
“Character,” Roberts said.
Roberts specifically pointed to Teoscar Hernández, who broke out of a slump Wednesday to hit a key three-run home run; to Freddie Freeman, who he revealed is now dealing with a quadriceps injury in addition to his ankle problems; to Mookie Betts, who has continued to play high-level shortstop while playing with a broken toe.
“Guys are not running from the middle part of the season, the stretch we’re going through,” Roberts said. “We’re just finding ways to win.”
Teoscar Hernández circles the bases after his three-run homer.
(Derrick Tuskan / Associated Press)
The series win against the Padres was also a credit to Roberts’ ability, and willingness, to play the long game.
With Tony Gonsolin put on the injured list last week, the Dodgers were forced to schedule two bullpen games in San Diego. By punting on the first and refraining from using any of his go-to relievers in a loss, Roberts ensured his team would be positioned to win the series finale.
Again, this was nothing new, as Roberts basically forfeited games in both the NL Championship Series and World Series last year with the remainder of the series in mind.
Roberts elected to send opener Ben Casparius back to the mound to pitch a fourth inning on Wednesday rather than replace him with Jack Dreyer, whom Roberts has grown to trust. The extra inning made a difference. Lou Trivino pitched to the bottom of the Padres’ lineup in the fifth inning, allowing Roberts to deploy Dreyer against the heart of the order in the sixth.
When Michael Kopech walked the bases loaded in the seventh inning, Roberts responded with the necessary degree of urgency rather than allow the recently activated Kopech to try to pitch his way out of trouble. Roberts summoned Anthony Banda, who retired Luis Arráez and Manny Machado to maintain the Dodgers’ 4-2 advantage.
“The bullpen has certainly been used and pushed,” Roberts said. “I just think it speaks to the character.”
And it says something about the manager as well.
Roberts is now in his 10th season as the manager of the Dodgers. He has managed 1,426 games for them in the regular season and another 100 in the postseason. At this point, there’s not much he hasn’t seen, including what the team is dealing with now.
I was driving while listening to the news Sunday when I heard House Speaker Mike Johnson justify President Trump’s move to send National Guard troops to Los Angeles.
“We have to maintain the rule of law,” Johnson said.
I almost swerved off the road.
Maintain the rule of law?
Steve Lopez
Steve Lopez is a California native who has been a Los Angeles Times columnist since 2001. He has won more than a dozen national journalism awards and is a four-time Pulitzer finalist.
Trump pardoned the hooligans who ransacked the Capitol because he lost the 2020 presidential election. They clashed with police, destroyed property and threatened the lives of public officials, and to Trump, they’re heroes.
Maintain the rule of law?
Trump is a 34-count felon who has defied judicial rulings, ignored laws that don’t serve his interests, and turned his current presidency into an unprecedented adventure in self-dealing and graft.
And now he’s sending an invading army to Los Angeles, creating a crisis where there was none. Arresting undocumented immigrants with criminal records is one thing, but is that what this is about? Or is it about putting on a show, occupying commercial and residential neighborhoods and arresting people who are looking for — or on their way to — work.
Protesters and members of the National Guard watched one another in front of the federal building in Los Angeles on Monday.
(Luke Johnson/Los Angeles Times)
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth warned that U.S. Marines were on high alert and ready to roll, and in the latest of who knows how many escalations, hundreds are headed our way.
What next, the Air Force?
I’m not going to defend the vandalism and violence — which plays into Trump’s hands—that followed ICE arrests in Los Angeles. I can see him sitting in front of the tube, letting out a cheer every time another “migrant criminal” flings a rock or a scooter at a patrol car.
But I am going to defend Los Angeles and the way things work here.
For starters, undocumented immigration is not the threat to public safety or the economy that Trump like to bloviate about.
It’s just that he knows he can score points on border bluster and on DEI (diversity, equity and inclusion), so he’s going full gasbag on both, and now he’s threatening to lock up Gov. Gavin Newsom.
To hear the rhetoric, you’d think every other undocumented immigrant is a gang member and that trans athletes will soon dominate youth sports if someone doesn’t stand up to them.
I can already read the mail that hasn’t yet arrived, so let me say in advance that I do indeed understand that breaking immigration law means breaking the law, and I believe that President Biden didn’t do enough to control the border, although it was Republicans who killed a border security bill early last year.
I also acknowledge the cost of supporting undocumented immigrants is substantial when you factor in public education and, in California, medical care, which is running billions of dollars beyond original estimates.
But the economic contributions of immigrants — regardless of legal status — are undeniably numerous, affecting the price we pay for everything from groceries to healthcare to domestic services to construction to landscaping.
Protesters shut down the 101 Freeway in Los Angeles on Sunday.
(Jason Armond/Los Angeles Times)
Last year, the Congressional Budget Office concluded that a surge in immigrants since 2021 — including refugees, asylum seekers and others, legal and illegal — had lifted the U.S. economy “by filling otherwise vacant jobs,” as The Times reported, and “pumping millions of tax dollars into state, local and federal coffers.”
According to a seminal 2011 study by the Public Policy Institute of California, “many illegal immigrants pay Social Security and other taxes but do not collect benefits, and they are not eligible for many government services.”
In addition, the report said: “Political controversies aside, when illegal immigrants come, many U.S. employers are ready to hire them. The vast majority work. Estimates suggest that at least 75 percent of adult illegal immigrants are in the workforce.”
Trump can rail against the lunatic radical left for the scourge of illegal immigration, but the statement that “employers are ready to hire them” couldn’t be more true. And those employers stand on both sides of the political aisle, as do lawmakers who for decades have allowed the steady flow of workers to industries that would suffer without them.
On Sunday, I had to pick up a couple of items at the Home Depot on San Fernando Road in Glendale, where dozens of day laborers often gather in search of work. But there were only a couple of men out there, given recent headlines.
A shopper in the garden section said the report of federal troops marching on L.A. is “kind of ridiculous, right?” He said the characterization by Trump of “all these terrible people” and “gang members” on the loose was hard to square with the reality of day laborers all but begging for work.
I found one of them in a far corner of the Home Depot lot, behind a fence. He told me he was from Honduras and was afraid to risk arrest by looking for work at a time when battalions of masked troops were on the move, but he’s got a hungry family back home, including three kids. He said he was available for any kind of jobs, including painting, hauling and cleanup.
Two men in a pickup truck told me they were undocumented too and available for construction jobs of any type. They said they were from Puebla, Mexico, but there wasn’t enough work for them there.
I’ve been to Puebla, a city known for its roughly 300 churches. I was passing through about 20 years ago on my way to a small nearby town where almost everyone on the street was female.
Where were the men?
Protesters shut down the 101 Freeway in Los Angeles on Sunday.
(Jason Armond/Los Angeles Times)
City workers repair broken windows at LAPD headquarters on Spring Street in downtown Los Angeles on Monday.
(Robert Gauthier/Los Angeles Times)
I was told by a city official that the local economy was all about corn, but local growers couldn’t compete with American farmers who had the benefit of federal subsidies. So the men had gone north for work.
Another reason people head north is to escape the violence wrought by cartels armed with American-made weapons, competing to serve the huge American appetite for drugs.
In these ways, and more, the flow of people across borders can be complicated. But generally speaking, it’s simply about survival. People move to escape poverty or danger. They move in search of something better for themselves, or to be more accurate about it, for their children.
The narratives of those journeys are woven into the fabric of Los Angeles. It’s part of what’s messy and splendid and complicated about this blended, imperfect corner of the world, where many of us know students or workers or families with temporary status, or none at all.
That’s why this overheated invasion looks so ugly and feels so personal.
We’re less suspicious of our neighbors and the people we encounter on our daily rounds than the hypocrites who would pardon insurrectionists, sow division and send an occupying army to haul away members of our community.
Los Angeles is now a mere 12 months away from serving as primary host of the World Cup soccer championships, and three years away from taking the world stage as host of both the 2028 Summer Olympics and Paralympics.
Athletes and tourists by the tens of thousands will pour into the region from around the world, and I’m reminded of the classic film “Sunset Boulevard,” in which Gloria Swanson proclaimed, “I’m ready for my close-up.”
Will L.A. be ready for its close-up?
Steve Lopez
Steve Lopez is a California native who has been a Los Angeles Times columnist since 2001. He has won more than a dozen national journalism awards and is a four-time Pulitzer finalist.
That’s a question I intend to explore on a semi-regular basis, and you’re invited to worry and wonder along with me by sending your comments and questions to [email protected].
To let you know where I’m coming from, I’m a sports fan who watches the Olympics on television despite the politics, the doping scandals and the corporatization of the Games. But I’m also a professional skeptic, and my questions extend far beyond whether we’re ready for our close-up.
Here are just a few:
Will the benefits of hosting outweigh the burdens?
Will the average Southern Californian get anything out of the years-long buildup and staging of the Games?
And, will basic services and infrastructure near Olympic venues get upgrades at the expense of long-overdue improvements in other areas?
The answer to that question is a big “yes,” says L.A. Councilwoman Monica Rodriguez, who represents the northeastern San Fernando Valley.
“What I’ve seen in [the latest] budget is that those areas that will be hosting some of the Olympic events will be prioritized,” she said, and that means her district is off the radar.
It’s worth noting that the city of Los Angeles is not running these Olympics (that’s the job of LA28, a private nonprofit working in conjunction with the International Olympic Committee), nor is it hosting all the events. Olympic sites will be scattered well beyond Los Angeles proper, with volleyball in Anaheim, for instance, cricket in Pomona, cycling in Carson and swimming in Long Beach. Softball and canoe slalom competitions will be held in Oklahoma City.
Competitors dive into the Seine river at the start of the men’s 10km, marathon swimming, at the 2024 Summer Olympic Games in Paris.
(David Goldman / Associated Press)
But as lead host and a partner in the staging of mega-events that will draw an international spotlight, the reputation of the city of Los Angeles is on the line.
One financial advantage the 2028 Games will enjoy over previous Olympics is that there’s no need to erect any massive, ridiculously expensive new stadiums or arenas. There’ll be soccer at the Rose Bowl in Pasadena, track and field at the L.A. Coliseum and baseball at Dodger Stadium, for instance. All of which will keep the overall cost of the Games down.
But playing the part of primary Olympic host carries as many risks as opportunities.
“The Games have a history of damaging the cities and societies that host them,” according to an analysis last year in the Georgetown Journal of International Affairs, which cited “broken budgets that burden the public purse … the militarization of public spaces … and the expulsion of residents through sweeps, gentrifications and evictions.”
Even without all that, L.A. has a raft of problems on its hands, and the close-up at the moment is not a pretty portrait.
Tens of thousands of people are homeless, and the agency overseeing homelessness is in turmoil amid damning financial audits, so unless there’s a quick turnaround, the city will be draped in blue tarps for all the world to see. Meanwhile, planned transportation improvements are behind schedule, skyrocketing liability claim settlements are expected to cost $300 million this year, and on top of all that, it suddenly dawned on local leaders several weeks ago that the city was broke.
“Our budget situation is critical,” Mayor Karen Bass wrote in an April letter to the City Council, outlining a nearly $1-billion deficit and proposing numerous program cuts and layoffs.
The City Council restored some of those trims, but the outlook is still grim, with several hundred workers losing their jobs. Bass and other local leaders maintain that playing host to mega-events will help restock the treasury. But the opposite could be true, and if the $7-billion Games don’t break even, the already-strapped city will get slapped with a $270-million bailout tab.
For all the hand-wringing at City Hall, it’s not as if the current budget deficit should have come as a surprise. Revenue is down, the response to homelessness devours a big chunk of the budget (without transformational progress to show for the investment), and the bills keep coming due on the City Hall tradition of awarding public employee pay raises it can’t afford.
That’s why there’s a 10-year wait to get a ruptured sidewalk fixed (although the city is much quicker to pay millions in trip-and-fall cases), and there’s an estimated $2 billion in deferred maintenance at recreation and parks department facilities. At TorchedLA, journalist Alissa Walker reports that in an annual ranking of park systems in the largest 100 cities, L.A. has dropped to 90th, which she fairly called “a bad look for a city set to host the largest sporting events in the world.”
Babe Didrikson, right, clears the first hurdle on her way to winning the first heat of the women’s 80-meter hurdles during the 1932 Los Angeles Olympic Games at the Coliseum.
(Associated Press)
Michael Schneider, founder of the nonprofit Streets for All, said L.A.’s budget crisis “is coming at the worst possible time.” Not that the delivery of basic infrastructure needs should be tied to major sporting events, but he had hoped the Olympics would trigger a substantial investment in “bus rapid transit, a network of bike lanes, sidewalks that aren’t broken, curb ramps. Just the nuts and bolts of infrastructure.”
Jules Boykoff, a Pacific University professor and former professional soccer player who has studied the social and economic impacts of several recent Olympics, is not wowed by L.A.’s record so far.
“I thought Los Angeles was going to be in a lot better shape,” Boykoff said. “I’ve been taken aback by the problems that exist and how little has been done.”
The real goal isn’t just to host the Olympics, Boykoff said, but to do so in a way that delivers long-lasting improvements.
“Any smart city” uses the Games “to get gains for everybody in the city. Athens in 2004 got a subway system,” he said, Rio de Janeiro in 2016 got a transit link, and last year’s host, Paris, got a system of bike lanes.
L.A. had gold-medal aspirations, and the city has made some transit improvements. It’s also got a wealth of signature natural wonders to show off, from the mountains to the sea, just as the Paris Games featured the Eiffel Tower and the magical evening skyline.
But three big hurdles now stand in the way of making it to the podium:
The budget limitations (which could get worse between now and 2028), the diversion of resources to the Palisades wildfire recovery, and the uncertainty of desperately needed federal financial support from President Trump, who would probably not put Los Angeles on his list of favorite cities.
Races are sometimes won by runners making a move from the back of the pack, and L.A. could still find its stride, show some pride, and avoid embarrassing itself.
That’s what I’m rooting for.
But just one year away from the World Cup and three from the Olympics, the clock is ticking, and it’s almost too late to be playing catchup.
Of course, Trump’s Secretary of Defense wants the name of Harvey Milk, the murdered gay rights pioneer, stripped from a ship.
Never mind that Milk served in the Korean War as a diving instructor, eventually discharged because of his sexual orientation. Or that he had exhibited courage in facing down haters as the nation’s first publicly out elected official. After all, when Pete Hegseth’s not sending confidential war plans via Signal to people who shouldn’t be privy to them, he’s busy bloviating about the “warrior ethos.”
Hegseth is a military veteran, a National Guardsman who did tours in Iraq and Afghanistan. But he’s also someone who has made a career out of telling Americans he, above everyone else, knows what our veterans need and what our armed forces need to defend the U.S. in an increasingly volatile world. So Hegseth may know something about warriors and fighting. So did Milk.
But Hegseth is too busy playing Rambo to recognize it. Instead, he’s weaponizing bigotry to remake the U.S. military as a scorched-earth, hetero-Christian outfit ready to stamp out liberal heretics here and abroad. That’s not befitting anyone who calls themselves a warrior, no matter how many pseudo-patriotic tattoos and American flag items of clothing Hegseth loves to sport.
A true warrior follows a code of honor that allows respect to those they disagree with and sometimes even combat. For Hegseth to specifically ask that the USNS Harvey Milk have its name changed during Pride Month — the same month that he’s requiring all trans service people to out themselves and voluntarily leave their positions or be discharged against their will — does not represent the “reestablishing [of] the warrior culture” that the Navy is citing as the reason for the moves.
Instead, it reveals Hegseth’s Achilles heel, one he shares with Trump: a fundamental insecurity about their place in a country that diversified long ago.
CBS News is also reporting the Navy is recommending the renaming of ships named after civil rights icons Medgar Evers, Cesar Chavez, Sojourner Truth and Lucy Stone along with ships that haven’t yet been built but are scheduled to bear the names of Dolores Huerta, Thurgood Marshall, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Harriet Tubman.
Pentagon spokesperson Sean Parnell gave my colleague Kevin Rector the same malarkey he’s giving the rest of the media when asked for comment about this matter: That Hegseth is “committed” to making sure all named military assets “are reflective of the Commander-in-Chief’s priorities, our nation’s history, and the warrior ethos.”
Marine Col. Alison Thompson, left, talks with Jenn Onofrio, center, a White House Fellow to the secretary of the Navy and Patrik Gallineaux, right, of the Richmond/Ermet Aid Foundation prior to the launching of the USNS Harvey Milk, a fleet replenishment oiler ship named after the first openly gay elected official in 2021 in San Diego.
(Alex Gallardo / Associated Press)
I can understand the argument can be made that naval ships should be named only after those who served, which would eliminate people like Huerta, Ginsburg and Truth. But there was a beauty in the idea of having the names of civil rights heroes adorn ships in the so-called John Lewis class, oilers named after the late congressman. It was a reminder that wars don’t just happen on the front lines but also on the home front. That those who serve to defend our democracy don’t just do it through the military. That winning doesn’t just happen with bullets and bombs.
That sometimes, the biggest threat to our nation hasn’t been the enemy abroad, but the enemy within. It’s not just my wokoso opinion, either — the oath that all Navy newcomers and newly minted officers must take have them swear to “support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic.”
You might not associate Huerta, Truth, and Marshall with the military — indeed, I was surprised the Navy had honored them, period. But I and millions of Americans do remember them for fierceness in their respective battlegrounds, a steeliness any sailor should aspire to. For anyone in Hegseth’s world to even think about erasing their name is a disgrace to the Stars and Stripes — but what else should we expect from a department whose boss evaded military service by claiming to have debilitating bone spurs?
The striking of Milk’s name from an oiler, and proposed renaming of dry cargo ships named for Evers and Chavez, is particularly vile.
Milk joined the Navy in the footsteps of his parents. He was so proud of his military background that he was wearing a belt buckle with his Navy diver’s insignia the night he was assassinated. Evers was inspired to fight Jim Crow after serving in a segregated Army unit during World War II. Chavez, meanwhile, was stationed in the western Pacific shortly after the Good War during his two-year Navy stint.
I called up Andres Chavez, executive director of the National Chavez Center and grandson of Cesar, to hear how he was feeling about this mess. Andres was there in 2012 when the USNS Cesar Chavez was launched in San Diego, christened with a champagne bottle by Helen Chavez, Cesar’s widow and Andres’ grandmother. He said “it was probably the second-most memorable commemoration I’ve seen of my Tata after Obama” dedicated the Cesar E. Chavez National Monument in the Central Valley that year.
The USNS Cesar Chavez was the last of the Navy’s Lewis and Clark class of boats, all named after pioneers and explorers. Andres said his family was initially “hesitant” to have a naval ship named in honor of their patriarch “because so much of Cesar’s identity is wrapped up in nonviolence” but accepted when they found out the push came from shipyard workers from San Diego’s Barrio Logan.
“And there’s been so many Latinos who have served in the military in this country, so we accepted on behalf of them as well,” he said.
The Chavez family found out about the possibility of the USNS Cesar Chavez losing its name from reporters.
“We’re just gonna wait and see what’s next, but we’re not surprised by this administration anymore,” Andres said. “It’s just not an affront to Cesar; it’s an affront to all the Latino veterans of this country.”
He pushed back on Hegseth’s definition of what a warrior is by bringing up the work of his grandfather and Milk. The two supported each other’s causes in the 1970s and met “numerous” times, according to Andres.
“They served by creating more opportunities for other people and fighting for their respect,” he concluded. “That’s the definition of a warrior.”
The fans packed Angel Stadium last week, erupting when the star emerged from the dugout during pregame warmups, chanting “M-V-P” in his honor during the game.
Aaron Judge and the New York Yankees had arrived in Anaheim, and the old ballpark was abuzz.
“Anywhere we play,” Judge said, “it’s a playoff atmosphere.”
Angels fans haven’t seen a playoff game in 11 years, so there were plenty of good seats available for Yankees fans. In the top of the first inning, Judge grounded out.
In the bottom of the first, the Angels’ star strutted into the spotlight. Zach Neto led off the inning by launching a 440-foot home run — the longest of his career — and flipping his bat so dramatically that Major League Baseball celebrated on social media.
The Angels lost the game, but their shortstop rose to the occasion in a way his team so often has not. We would say Neto is a star in the making, with pop in his bat and swagger in his game, but he already is a star.
An All-Star.
“One hundred percent. For sure. No doubt,” said Angels closer Kenley Jansen, himself a four-time All-Star.
Baseball turns its All-Star ballot live Wednesday, and there is no shortage of Dodgers players worthy of votes. If Judge does not get the most votes overall, Shohei Ohtani should.
Freddie Freeman entered play Tuesday batting .368, and he leads National League first basemen in WAR. Will Smith is batting .331 and leads NL catchers in WAR. Shortstop Mookie Betts and outfielder Teoscar Hernández figure to attract some votes, and Yoshinobu Yamamoto should be one of the pitchers selected.
The Dodgers had six All-Stars last year. The Angels had one: pitcher Tyler Anderson.
This year, Neto ought to be that guy. His 10 home runs lead American League shortstops. Among all major leaguers, only Ohtani has more leadoff homers than Neto.
“It’s a no-brainer he is our All-Star this year,” Jansen said.
Angels shortstop Zach Neto high-fives a fan before a game against the Marlins at Angel Stadium in May 24.
(Gina Ferazzi / Los Angeles Times)
Neto is one of seven major leaguers with 30 home runs and 30 stolen bases in their last 162 games. The others: Ohtani, Ronald Acuña Jr., Corbin Carroll, Francisco Lindor, José Ramírez and Kyle Tucker.
Lindor is the only other shortstop in the group. That makes Neto a star in a rather bright constellation.
“He’s a superstar in the making,” Jansen said.
Neto almost certainly would need to be voted in by his peers, or selected by the league office. Even his manager admits Neto has virtually no chance to be voted in by the fans.
Angels manager Ron Washington said Neto is “definitely” an All-Star but suggested Bobby Witt Jr. of the Kansas City Royals, the runner-up to Judge as AL most valuable player last season, would be voted the starting shortstop.
“I think he is going to be the guy,” Washington said.
And Neto?
“They need some backup,” Washington said. “It doesn’t matter if you make the All-Star team as a backup. You made the All-Star team.
“I think he’s got the opportunity to do just that.”
Angels shortstop Zach Neto gives the safe sign as he slides on his belly across home plate ahead of the tag during a game against the Giants in April.
(Wally Skalij / Associated Press)
Gunnar Henderson of the Baltimore Orioles started at shortstop for the AL last season. Jeremy Peña of the Houston Astros has a better WAR than anyone in the AL except Judge, according to Baseball Reference. Jacob Wilson of the Athletics has a better OPS than Witt, and he is batting .355 — better than anyone in the majors besides Judge and Freeman.
“With all the shortstops out there, he is just going to have to bide his time,” Washington said of Neto. “Hopefully, he gets chosen.”
The fans select the starters, and the players in the AL and NL select the backups in their respective leagues. If the fans vote Witt, do enough AL players appreciate Neto’s game?
“Yeah,” Washington said, laughing, “because he bust their [butt].”
Said Dodgers manager Dave Roberts: “Love him. Certainly, his skill set plays. And, for him to be — what, a couple years removed from college? — I just love that he just has that feel for leadership. He’s already a leader. I can see it from the other side.
“He’s sort of like that old-school gritty ballplayer. He can beat you a lot of ways. He’s quickly going higher on the list of players I love to watch.”
The league office completes the All-Star rosters, in large part to ensure each team has at least one representative. It is not a given that Neto would be the Angels’ representative.
If two or three other shortstops are chosen, the league office could opt for catcher Logan O’Hoppe or, if position players are fully stocked, pitcher Yusei Kikuchi. If Mike Trout stays healthy and gets hot, the league office could give fans across America the Angels player they would most want to see.
Yet there is no question that Neto is the Angels’ best player this year, and a star for years to come.
“This guy,” Roberts said, “is going to be an All-Star for a long time.”
She rides three buses from her Panorama City home to her job as a caregiver for an 83-year-old Sherman Oaks woman with dementia, and lately she’s been worrying about getting nabbed by federal agents.
When I asked what she’ll do if she gets deported, B., who’s 60 and asked me to withhold her name, paused to compose herself.
“I don’t want to cry,” she said, but losing her $19 hourly job would be devastating, because she sends money to the Philippines to support her family.
Steve Lopez
Steve Lopez is a California native who has been a Los Angeles Times columnist since 2001. He has won more than a dozen national journalism awards and is a four-time Pulitzer finalist.
The world is getting grayer each day thanks to an epic demographic wave. In California, 22% of the state’s residents will be 65 and older by 2040, up by 14% from 2020.
“At a time where it seems fewer and fewer of us want to work in long-term care, the need has never been greater,” Harvard healthcare policy analyst David C. Grabowski told The Times’ Emily Alpert Reyes in January.
So how will millions of aging Americans be able to afford care for physical and cognitive decline, especially given President Trump’s big beautiful proposed cuts to Medicaid, which covers about two-thirds of nursing home residents? And who will take care of those who don’t have family members who can step up?
A building where multiple caregivers live in a cramped studio apartment in Panorama City.
(Jason Armond / Los Angeles Times)
There are no good answers at the moment. Deporting care providers might make sense if there were a plan to make the jobs more attractive to homegrown replacements, but none of us would bet a day-old doughnut on that happening.
Nationally and in California, the vast majority of workers in care facilities and private settings are citizens. But employers were already having trouble recruiting and keeping staff to do jobs that are low-paying and difficult, and now Trump administration policies could further shrink the workforce.
Earlier this year, the administration ordered an end to programs offering temporary protected status and work authorization, and the latest goal in Trump’s crackdown on illegal immigration is to make 3,000 arrests daily.
“People are worried about the threat of deportation … but also about losing whatever job they have and being unable to secure other work,” said Aquilina Soriano Versoza, director of the Pilipino Workers Center, who estimated that roughly half of her advocacy group’s members are undocumented.
In the past, she said, employers didn’t necessarily ask for work authorization documents, but that’s changing. And she fears that given the political climate, some employers will “feel like they have impunity to exploit workers,” many of whom are women from Southeast Asia, Africa, the Caribbean, Mexico and Latin America.
That may already be happening.
“We’ve seen a lot of fear, and we’ve seen workers who no longer want to pursue their cases” when it comes to fighting wage theft, said Yvonne Medrano, an employment rights lawyer with Bet Tzedek, a legal services nonprofit.
A gathering at the Pilipino Workers Center in Los Angeles in Historic Filipinotown. Aquilina Soriano Versoza, director of the center, says, “People are worried about the threat of deportation … but also about losing whatever job they have and being unable to secure other work.”
(Ringo Chiu / For The Times)
Medrano said the workers are worried that pursuing justice in the courts will expose them to greater risk of getting booted out of the country. In one case, she said, a worker was owed a final paycheck for a discontinued job, but the employer made a veiled threat, warning that showing up to retrieve it could be costly.
Given the hostile environment, some workers are giving up and going home.
“We’ve seen an increase in workers self-deporting,” Medrano said.
Conditions for elder care workers were bleak enough before Trump took office. Two years ago, I met with documented and undocumented caregivers and although they’re in the healthcare business, some of them didn’t have health insurance for themselves.
I met with a cancer survivor and caregiver who was renting a converted garage without a kitchen. And I visited an apartment in Panorama City where Josephine Biclar, in her early 70s, was struggling with knee and shoulder injuries while still working as a caregiver.
Biclar was sharing a cramped studio with two other caregivers. They used room dividers to carve their space into sleeping quarters. When I checked with Biclar this week, she said four women now share the same space. All of them have legal status, but because of low wages and the high cost of housing, along with the burden of supporting families abroad, they can’t afford better living arrangements.
B. and another care provider share a single room, at a cost of $400 apiece, from a homeowner in Panorama City. B. said her commute takes more than an hour each way, and during her nine-hour shift, her duties for her 83-year-old client include cooking, feeding and bathing.
She’s only working three days a week at the moment and said additional jobs are hard to come by given her status and the immigration crackdown. She was upset that for the last two months, she couldn’t afford to send any money home.
“People are worried about the threat of deportation, but also about losing whatever job they have and being unable to secure other work, said Aquilina Soriano Versoza, executive director of the Pilipino Workers Center.
(Christina House / Los Angeles Times)
Retired UCLA scholar Fernando Torres-Gil, who served as President Clinton’s assistant secretary on aging, said “fear and chaos” in the elder care industry are not likely to end during this presidential administration. And given budget constraints, California will be hard-pressed to do more for caregivers and those who need care.
But he thinks the growing crisis could eventually lead to an awakening.
“We’re going to see more and more older folks without long-term care,” Torres-Gil said. “Hopefully, Democrats and Republicans will get away from talking about open borders and talk about selective immigration” that serves the country’s economic and social needs.
The U.S. is not aging alone, Torres-Gil pointed out. The same demographic shifts and healthcare needs are hitting the rest of the world, and other countries may open their doors to workers the U.S. sends packing.
“As more baby boomers” join the ranks of those who need help, he said, “we might finally understand we need some kind of leadership.”
It’s hard not to be cynical these days, but I’d like to think he’s onto something.
Meanwhile, I’m following leads and working different angles on this topic. If you’re having trouble finding or paying for care, or if you’re on the front lines as a provider, I’m hoping you will drop me a line.
Guess who suddenly has a “TACO” allergy? President Yuge Taco Salad himself.
In the annals of four-letter words and acronyms Donald Trump has long hitched his political fortunes on, the word “taco” may be easy to overlook.
There’s MAGA, most famously. DOGE, courtesy of Elon Musk. Huge (pronounced yuge, of course). Wall, as in the one he continues to build on the U.S.-Mexico border. “Love” for himself, “hate” against all who stand in his way.
There’s a four-letter term, however, that best sums up Trump’s shambolic presidency, one no one would’ve ever associated with him when he announced his first successful presidential campaign a decade ago.
Taco.
His first use of the most quintessential of Mexican meals happened on Cinco de Mayo 2016, when Trump posted a portrait of himself grinning in front of a giant taco salad while proclaiming “I Love Hispanics!” Latino leaders immediately ridiculed his Hispandering, with UnidosUS president Janet Murguia telling the New York Times that it was “clueless, offensive and self-promoting” while also complaining, “I don’t know that any self-respecting Latino would even acknowledge that a taco bowl is part of our culture.”
I might’ve been the only Trump critic in the country to defend his decision to promote taco salads. After all, it’s a dish invented by a Mexican American family at the old Casa de Fritos stand in Disneyland. But also because the meal can be a beautiful, crunchy thing in the right hands. Besides, I realized what Trump was doing: getting his name in the news, trolling opponents, and having a hell of a good time doing it while welcoming Latinos into his basket of deplorables as he strove for the presidency. Hey, you couldn’t blame the guy for trying.
Guess what happened?
Despite consistently trashing Latinos, Trump increased his share of that electorate in each of his presidential runs and leaned on them last year to capture swing states like Arizona and Nevada. Latino Republican politicians made historic gains across the country in his wake — especially in California, where the number of Latino GOP legislators jumped from four in 2022 to a record nine.
The Trump taco salad tweet allowed his campaign to present their billionaire boss to Latinos as just any other Jose Schmo ready to chow down on Mexican food. It used the ridicule thrown at him as proof to other supporters that elites hated people like them. Trump must have at least felt confident the taco salad gambit from yesteryear worked because he reposted the image on social media this Cinco de Mayo, adding the line “This was so wonderful, 9 years ago today!”
It’s not exactly live by the taco, die by the taco. (Come on, why would such a tasty force of good want to hurt anyone)? But Trump is suddenly perturbed by the mere mention of TACO.
Doritos Locos Tacos at the Taco Bell Laguna Beach location.
(Don Leach/Daily Pilot)
That’s an acronym mentioned in a Financial Times newsletter earlier this month that means Trump Always Chickens Out. The insult is in reference to the growing belief in Wall Street that people who invest in stocks should keep in mind that the president talks tough on tariffs but never follows through because he folds under pressure like the Clippers. Or a taco, come to think of it.
Trump raged when CNBC reporter Megan Cassella asked him about TACO at a White House press conference this week.
“Don’t ever say what you said,” the commander in chief snarled before boasting about how he wasn’t a chicken and was actually a tough guy. “That’s a nasty question.”
No other reporter followed up with TACO questions, because the rest of the internet did. Images of Trump in everything from taco suits to taco crowns to carnivorous tacos swallowing Trump whole have bloomed ever since. News outlets are spreading Trump’s out-of-proportion response to something he could’ve just laughed off, while “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” just aired a parody song to the tune of “Macho Man” titled — what else? — “Taco Man.”
The TACO coinage is perfect: snappy, easily understandable, truthful and seems Trump-proof. The master of appropriating insults just can’t do anything to make TACO his — Trump Always Cares Outstandingly just doesn’t have the same ring. It’s also a reminder that Trump’s anti-Latino agenda so far in his administration makes a predictable mockery of his taco salad boast and related Hispandering.
Meanwhile, the economy — the main reason why so many Latinos went for Trump in 2024 in the first place — hasn’t improved since the Biden administration and always seems one Trump speech away from getting even wobblier.
As for Latinos, there are some signs Trump’s early presidency has done him no great favors with them. An April survey by the Pew Research Center — considered the proverbial gold standard when it comes to objectively gauging how Latinos feel about issues — found 27% of them approve of how he’s doing as president, down from 36% back in February.
President Trump gives a thumbs up to the cheering crowd after a Latinos for Trump Coalition roundtable in Phoenix in 2020.
(Ross D. Franklin / Associated Press)
Trump was always an imperfect champion of the taco’s winning potential, and not because the fish tacos at his Trump Grill come with French fries (labeled “Idaho” on the menu) and the taco salad currently costs a ghastly $25. He never really understood that a successful taco must appeal to everyone, never shatter or rip apart under pressure and can never take itself seriously like a burrito or a snooty mole.
The president needs to move on from his taco dalliance and pay attention to another four-letter word, one more and more Americans utter after every pendejo move Trump and his flunkies commit:
When the world calls you “Little Al,” you’re going to do what it takes to be seen.
That’s what I thought after spending an hour last week at the Porsche Experience Center in Carson with the city’s former mayor, Albert Robles.
He’s not the Albert Robles who was found guilty 19 years ago of fleecing South Gate out of $20 million as treasurer — that’s Big Al Robles. Little Al is the one who has tried to be a political somebody in L.A. County for over 30 years, only to almost always fall short, his career careening from one controversy to another.
In 2006, he represented three men who moved to Vernon in an attempt to take over the City Council; they all lost. That same year, Little Al represented Big Al — no, they’re not actually related — at the latter’s sentencing and argued that his client deserved leniency since what he did was common in California politics. The presiding judge replied, “What you have just said is among the most absurd things I have ever heard.”
Then-Carson Mayor Al Robles during a Carson City Council meeting at City Hall in 2015.
(Los Angeles Times)
The year after he was elected Carson’s mayor in 2015, the Fair Political Practices Commission fined Robles $12,000 to resolve allegations of campaign finance law violations. Two years after that, Robles’ 24-year tenure on the board of directors for Water Replenishment District of Southern California — an obscure agency that provides water for 44 cities in L.A. County — ended after a Superior Court judge ruled he couldn’t hold that seat at the same time that he was serving as mayor.
He lost the mayoral seat in the 2020 general election after striking out in his bid for county supervisor in the primary election earlier that year. Robles has been unsuccessful in two other races since — for an L.A. County Superior Court seat in 2022, and a state Senate primary last year where he garnered just 8.5% of the vote.
“I keep thinking I’m done and then I’m not done,” the 56-year-old joked at one point in our conversation as Caymans and Carreras roared through the test track as we lounged in a nearby patio. “It’s kind of like they dragged me back in.”
“Whether or not she lives in [Huntington Park], whether or not she’s an angel, whether or not she’s Charles Manson, that doesn’t matter: She was denied the process that all of us are entitled to,” Robles said.
Um, Manson?
He’s also representing another former Huntington Park council member, Valentin Amezquita, in another lawsuit against the city. That one demands the city hold a special election for Castillo’s former seat, which Amezquita unsuccessfully applied for.
Wait, aren’t the lawsuits contradicting each other?
A judge told him the same thing, Robles admitted. He told me he filed them to expose what he described as Huntington Park’s “hypocrisy” for supposedly following the city charter over the Castillo matter, but ignoring it when choosing her replacement.
“It’s just like what’s happening at the federal level, as far as I see it,” Robles grumbled. Earlier, he compared the lack of due process Castillo allegedly faced to Kilmar Abrego Garcia, the Salvadoran national illegally deported by the Trump administration to his home country. “It’s frustrating.”
The more he talked, the more it became evident Robles wants to be seen as the crusader he’s always imagined himself to be and is annoyed that he’s not.
Carson Mayor Albert Robles speaks during a hearing about a proposed $480-million desalination plant in El Segundo in 2019 at the Carson Event Center.
(Dania Maxwell / Los Angeles Times)
His grievances are many.
He continues to hold a grudge against former L.A. County Dist. Atty. Steve Cooley, whom he described as “corrupt … and I’ll call him that to his face.” Cooley, for his part, told The Times in 2013 that when Robles unsuccessfully ran against him in 2008, he was “probably the most unqualified candidate ever” because of his political past.
Robles bragged that he torpedoed Cooley’s career.
“It’s an exaggeration — over-embellishment — on my part, but I actually take credit for” Cooley losing his 2010 bid to become California attorney general. “Because when I ran against him, I caused him to spend money — money that he otherwise would have had for the AG race. And if [Cooley] had that additional half a million dollars that he had to spend for the DA race, he may have won.”
He thinks Latino politicians need to close ranks like he feels other ethnicities do.
Case in point: Operation Dirty Pond, an L.A. County district attorney probe into a long-delayed Huntington Park aquatic park. In February, investigators raided City Hall and the homes of seven individuals, including two former council members and two current ones. Robles said the probe doesn’t “make sense” and is further proof that Latino politicians are held to a higher standard than other politicians.
“If Esmeralda were Black or Asian, or hell — dare I say — even white, I think it would be reported differently. I honestly believe that. Because those communities are willing to set aside their differences for the better good, because they know that, hey, if one person is being mistreated, we all are.”
Once he realized I wanted to discuss his own political travails as much as of his clients, Robles said the better setting for our chat would’ve been the Albert Robles Center, a water treatment center in Pico Rivera that opened in 2019.
“That structure, you know, everyone loves it now. Everyone celebrates that it’s there. But surprise, surprise: not one environmental group, not one came out and supported our effort to build it up. … Nobody fought more for that building, for that project, than me.”
This set off more grievances.
Robles was bitter that L.A.’s “Latino power elite” hadn’t listened to him and invested more time and effort in the South Bay, where Latinos make up a majority of the population in many cities but have little political representation.
“They just see us as differently and the resources to organize and build up that political power base never materialized,” he said. “I don’t know if they see it as ‘Oh, those are more affluent communities, they don’t need our help.’ I don’t know.”
He was also “disheartened” by Black residents that opposed district elections in Carson that would have probably brought more Latinos onto the council. They were introduced in 2020 after a lawsuit alleged Latino voters were disenfranchised in the city. Since then, there hasn’t been a Latino elected to the City Council.
“We would have members of the African American community come up and say, ‘Well, we have a Latino mayor. We don’t need districts. Latinos should vote — stop speaking Spanish, and learn to vote.’ And then I would say, ‘You know, everything you’re saying is what whites said about Blacks in the South. And they’re like, ‘That’s not true.’ So, like, some forgot their history and now we seem to have fallen into the politics of, ‘If it’s not us, it can’t be them.’”
We climbed upstairs to the Porsche Experience Center’s viewing deck so Robles could pose for photos. Workers at the venue’s restaurant greeted him, drawing the first genuine smile Robles had flashed all afternoon.
He then mentioned that somewhere in the building was his name. I thought it would be on a plaque commemorating the debut of the Porsche Experience Center in 2016, when Robles was mayor. But it turned out to be his John Hancock alongside a bunch of others on a whiteboard in a room facing the parking lot.
The room was locked.
Robles wondered out loud if he should ask the staff to open it so we could take a better look. Instead, we peered through a window.
“It’s right there,” he told me, trying to describe where exactly it was among all the other signatures. “Well, you’re not familiar with it so you probably can’t see it.”
Commentary: From Wild West days to 2025, he safeguards L.A County Sheriff’s Department history
When an explosion killed three L.A. County sheriff’s deputies last month, Mike Fratantoni thought about 1857.
A horse thief named Juan Flores broke out of San Quentin State Prison, joined a posse that called itself Las Manillas — the handcuffs — and headed south toward Southern California. They robbed stores along the way and murdered a German shopkeeper in San Juan Capistrano. Los Angeles County Sheriff James R. Barton was warned about them but ignored the danger. He and his men were ambushed. Four were killed — Barton, Deputy Charles Daly and constables Charles Baker and William Little. The spot, near the interchange where State Route 133 and the 405 Freeway meet in Irvine, is now called Barton Mound.
Orange County was still a part of L.A. County then, the population was just over 11,000, California was a newly minted state, and the Mexican period was giving way to the Wild West.
“They all died alone with no help coming,” said Fratantoni, the Sheriff’s Department’s staff historian. “Today, you know your partner is coming to help you. People say the job’s dangerous now — it’s never not been dangerous.”
So as Sheriff Robert Luna prepared to hold a news conference hours after the accident at a department training facility in East L.A. took the lives of Dets. Joshua Kelley-Eklund, Victor Lemus and William Osborn, Fratantoni sent over notes about what happened to Barton and his men. That’s how Luna was able to tell the public that the latest line-of-duty deaths to befall the department happened on its deadliest day in more than 160 years, a line quickly repeated by media across the country.
Fratantoni describes himself as the “default button” whenever someone has a question about the Sheriff’s Department’s past, whether it’s a colleague or the public, whether it’s about the positive or the scandalous. He can tell you why female deputies stopped wearing caps (blame the popularity of beehive hairdos in the 1960s) and reveal why longtime Sheriff Eugene Biscailuz was a pioneer in trying to rehabilitate addicts (his father was an alcoholic).
It’s a job the Long Island native has officially held for a decade. He assumed the position with the blessing of then-Sheriff Jim McDonnell to tap into a passion Fratantoni had dabbled in on his own almost from the moment he joined the department in 1999.
“You can’t talk about L.A. County history without us,” Fratantoni said when we met at the Hall of Justice. Outside, the flags remained at half-staff in honor of the dead detectives. He was taking me on a tour of the building’s basement museum, which showcased the histories of the L.A. County Sheriff’s Department, district attorney’s office and coroner. “We’ve been there from Day 1. We were here before the Board of Supervisors. We were here before LAPD. We’ve never closed. We’ve survived it all.”
“We check with Mike on everything,” Luna told me in a phone interview. Last year, the sheriff joined Fratantoni and other current and retired Sheriff’s Department members for the dedication of a plaque to commemorate the 1857 Barton Mound massacre. “You get 10 minutes with him, and wow.”
I was able to get two hours.
Fratantoni is burly but soft-spoken, a trace of a New York accent lingering in his by-the-books cadence. All around us were books, poster boards and newspaper headlines of criminals that Angelenos still remember and those long forgotten, people such as Winnie Ruth Judd, who murdered two friends in Phoenix in 1931 then traveled to Los Angeles by train with their bodies in trunks.
We passed through a row of original L.A. County jail cells that were brought down piece by piece from their original location on the 10th floor of the Hall of Justice. He pointed out a display case of makeshift weapons, tattoo needles and fake IDs created by inmates over the department’s 175 years. I stared too long at a black jacket and AC/DC hat worn by the Night Stalker — serial killer Richard Ramirez.
Fratantoni shows off vintage items used for illegal gambling.
(Luke Johnson / Los Angeles Times)
The museum receives free rent from L.A. County but is otherwise funded and maintained by the Sheriffs’ Relief Foundation and the dollar a month pulled from the paychecks of Sheriff’s Department employees who sign up to support — “We don’t want to be a burden,” Fratantoni explained. It’s not open to the general public, but he frequently hosts deputies, prosecutors, law students and even school field trips.
“The kids come and love this one for some reason,” he said with a chuckle as we passed a narcotics display. “Not my favorite one.”
Fratantoni never rushed me and turned every question I had into a short story that never felt like a lecture. He frequently apologized for random artifacts strewn around — plaques, movie posters, a biography of mobster Mickey Cohen — or displays not lit to his liking. “Am I putting you to sleep yet?” he joked at one point.
The 45-year-old is more than a curator or nerdy archivist. Luna, like his predecessors Alex Villanueva and McDonnell, has entrusted Fratantoni to not just help preserve the department’s history but also imprint its importance on the men and women who are its present and future.
“I have always been a fan of history,” said Luna, who has organized lunchtime lectures about the department and civil rights. For Black History Month in February, Fratantoni spoke about the troubles faced by deputies William Abbott and John Brady, who in 1954 became the department’s first integrated patrol unit.
The recriminations against Abbott, who was Black, and Brady didn’t come from within but rather the residents in West Hollywood they served. “I believe it’s important to teach our deputies where we’ve been and some of the challenges we’ve faced. You can’t help but to want to listen to his stories,” Luna said of Fratantoni.
“Mike is just phenomenal,” said Deputy Graciela Medrano, a 25-year-veteran who was also at the museum the day I visited. A black ribbon stretched across her badge — a sign of mourning, law enforcement style. “I’ll ask him about cases that happened when I was just starting, and he immediately knows what I’m talking about. He makes us all appreciate our department more.”
Every year, Fratantoni speaks to the latest class of recruits about the department’s history. “They know it’s been around but nothing else. So I share photos, I tell stories. And I tell them, ‘You’re getting a torch passed to you, and you’re going to run the next leg.’ You can see their reactions — our history gives them a sense of purpose.”
He’ll also attend community events with other deputies in vintage uniforms or old department cars. “Someone will see it and say, ‘That’s my granddad’s car’ and smile. We can have conversations with the public we otherwise wouldn’t be able to.”
Fratantoni was supposed to focus this year on the department’s 175th anniversary. Another goal was to seek out an interview with Shirley MacLaine, one of the last surviving queens of the Sheriff’s Championship Rodeo, an annual event that used to fill up the Memorial Coliseum and attract Hollywood A-listers.
But 2025 got in the way. We spoke a week before the burials of Osborn and Kelley-Eklund (the services for Lemus have yet to be announced). Fratantoni also sits on the committee charged with putting names on the Los Angeles County Peace Officers’ Memorial.
“I don’t like doing it, and I hope I don’t have to fill out paperwork for it ever again, but if that’s what I have to do, I’m honored to be a part of it,” he said. “I hold it close to my heart.”
Fratantoni in front of a section of the museum that highlights the history of the L.A. County district attorney’s office.
(Luke Johnson / Los Angeles Times)
Even the work commemorating what happened during the Barton Mound massacre remains unfinished. The victims were buried at the old City Cemetery downtown but were moved to Rosedale Cemetery in Mid-City in 1914. No one bothered to mark their new graves, which were lost until researchers discovered them a few years ago. Fratantoni and others are fundraising for new tombstones for their slain predecessors.
He mentioned Daly’s story: Born in Ireland. Came to California for the Gold Rush. Became a blacksmith — he put the shoes on the horses that Barton and his constables were going to use to pursue Las Manillas. A strong, able man whom Barton deputized so he could join them on the day they would all die.
“It’s sad to see people who lost their life be forgotten,” Fratantoni said. “That’s just…”
The historian tasked with talking shook his head in silence.
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Commentary: The state sets lofty goals in the name of a brighter future. What’s a vision and what’s a hallucination?
In April of 2006, I watched a posse of politicians gather at Skid Row’s Midnight Mission to introduce, with great fanfare and unbridled confidence, a 10-year plan to end homelessness in Los Angeles.
That didn’t work out so well.
Twelve years later, in his 2018 State of the City address, Mayor Eric Garcetti made a full-throated vow to quit fooling around and get the job done.
Los Angeles knows how to weather a crisis — or two or three. Angelenos are tapping into that resilience, striving to build a city for everyone.
“We are here to end homelessness,” he said.
Mission not accomplished.
We have a habit of setting lofty goals and making grand promises in Los Angeles and in California.
That’s not necessarily a bad thing. Better to have politicians and experts who study the pressing issues of the day and go out on a limb rather than shrug their shoulders.
“It’s hard to do anything if you don’t have a vision,” said Jessica Bremner, a Cal State L.A. urban geography professor. Transit, housing and infrastructure needs won’t materialize without that vision, she added. “Nothing will move.”
Agreed. And all of us, not just politicians, want to believe there’s a better version of our community — a brighter future.
But there is a big difference between a vision and a hallucination, and we’ve had some of both in recent years.
Here’s a sampling:
A mobile phone user looks at an earthquake warning application. After the Northridge quake, the state passed a law requiring seismic upgrades of hospitals by 2030. As of 2023, nearly two-thirds had yet to complete the required improvements.
(Richard Vogel / Associated Press)
In 2022, California set a goal of eliminating the sale of gas-powered vehicles after 2035 — which would dramatically reduce greenhouse emissions — and reaching carbon neutrality by 2045.
After the 1994 Northridge earthquake, the state did more than set a goal. It passed a law requiring hospitals to upgrade seismic safety by 2030.
Los Angeles, under Garcetti, championed Vision Zero in 2015. The goal? Eliminate traffic deaths by 2025. Not reduce, but eliminate.
Steve Lopez
Steve Lopez is a California native who has been a Los Angeles Times columnist since 2001. He has won more than a dozen national journalism awards and is a four-time Pulitzer finalist.
In 2020, the city embraced SmartLA 2028, a plan to reduce reliance on fossil fuels and gas-powered vehicles and build “a data-driven connected city, which addresses the digital divide and brings fresh ideas, including tele-health, clean tech and a switch to mass transit.”
In 2021, the California Master Plan for Aging set “five bold goals” to increase affordable housing and improve health, caregiving and economic security for older adults and those with disabilities by 2030.
In anticipation of L.A.’s hosting of the 2028 Summer Olympics and Paralympics, Metro introduced its “Twenty-eight by ‘28” initiative in 2018, outlining more than two dozen transit objectives.
The DTLA 2040 plan, adopted by the city in 2023, would add 70,000 housing units and 55,000 jobs over the next 15 years.
So how’s it all going?
The good news: There’s been a lot of progress.
The bad news: Where to begin?
Surely you’ll fall over backward when I tell you that funding shortages, politics, evolving priorities, lack of coordination, haphazard and disjointed planning, and less than stellar leadership have stymied progress on many fronts.
On homelessness, thousands have been housed and helped thanks to big initiatives and voter-approved resources. But as an observer once described it, we’ve been managing rather than solving the crisis and essentially bailing a leaky boat with a teaspoon. And now the agency at the helm is in disarray.
People experiencing homelessness pack their tents and belongings during the cleanup of an encampment on Wilshire Boulevard in downtown Los Angeles.
(Etienne Laurent / For The Times)
On climate change, California deserves a big pat on the back for at least acknowledging the crisis and responding with big ideas. But the Trump administration, which is likely to hold steady up to and beyond the point at which Mar-a-Lago is underwater, has all but declared war on the Golden State’s good intentions, eliminating funding for key projects and challenging the state’s authority.
The U.S. Supreme Court has sided with Trump, Congress and fossil fuel companies in opposing the state’s ambitions. Meanwhile, a grim analysis last year, which can’t be blamed on Trump, said the state would have to triple the pace of progress to reach its 2030 greenhouse gas reduction target.
As for the law requiring seismic upgrades of hospitals by 2030, as of 2023, nearly two-thirds had yet to complete the required improvements and many had asked for amendments and extensions.
L.A.’s Vision Zero, meanwhile, which promised the redesign of high-accident locations and multiple other safety upgrades for pedestrians, cyclists and motorists, has been a singular embarrassment.
Rather than an elimination of traffic deaths, the number has surged, and an audit released earlier this year serves as an indictment of local leadership. It cited lack of accountability along with “conflicts of personality, lack of total buy-in for implementation, disagreements over how the program should be administered.”
“Incredibly disappointing,” said Michael Manville, a UCLA professor of urban planning. “The city remains incredibly dangerous for cyclists and pedestrians.”
Manville didn’t have very high grades, either, for Metro’s 28×28 foray.
“It’s a joke at this point,” he said, although even though he noted that some progress is undeniable, citing in particular the expected completion of the Purple Line extension to the Westside in time for the Olympics.
But many of the 28 original projects won’t make the deadline, and oh, by the way, there’s no money at the moment to pay for the promised fleet of 2,700 buses for what Mayor Karen Bass has called the transit-first, “no-car” Olympics.
One morning in June, I stood on Van Nuys Boulevard in Pacoima with L.A. City Councilwoman Monica Rodriguez. She was looking to the north, in the direction of an empty promise.
“This is the home of the future San Fernando Valley Light Rail,” Rodriguez said. “It was supposed to be one of the 28 by 28, and we’re now looking at probably 2031 to 2032 for its completion … in a community that has a majority dependence … on public transit.”
We also visited the site of a proposed Sylmar fire station for which there was a groundbreaking ceremony about two decades ago. Rodriguez said with the adjacent hills turning brown as fire season approaches, Sylmar is long overdue for the station, but the city is hobbled by a massive budget deficit.
“Now I’ve just got to get the money to build it,” Rodriguez said.
(KTLA)
Sometimes it seems as if the big goals are designed to redirect our attention from the failures of daily governance. Sure, there’s a 10-year wait to get your ruptured sidewalk fixed, but flying taxis are in the works for the Olympics.
And one convenient feature of long-term goals is that when 2035 or 2045 rolls around, few may remember who made the promises, or even recall what was promised.
In Professor Bremner’s vision of a rosier L.A. future, there would be more buses and trains on the lines that serve the Cal State L.A. transit station. She told me she talks to her students about the relationship between climate change and the car culture, and then watches them hustle after night classes to catch a bus that runs on 30-minute intervals or a train that rolls in once an hour.
As for the other big promises I mentioned, SmartLA 2028 lays out dozens of laudable but perhaps overly ambitious goals — “Los Angeles residents will experience an improved quality of life by leveraging technology to meet urban challenges. No longer the ‘car capital of the world’, residents will choose how they wish to get around LA, using a single, digital payment platform, with choices like renovated Metro rail and bus systems or micro transit choices, such as on-demand LANow shuttles or dockless bicycles.” But in the 50-page strategy document, the word “challenges” is mentioned quite a bit, and I worry that this particular reference could be the kiss of death:
“City of Los Angeles departments have varying funding sources, missions, and directives, which can inhibit unified, citywide Smart City technology initiatives.”
It’s a little too soon to know whether the DTLA 2040 goals will rank as vision or hallucination, but downtown is the logical place for high-density residential development and construction cranes are already on the job. As for the Master Plan for Aging, there’s been progress but also uncertainty about steady funding streams, particularly given current state budget miseries, and there’s no guarantee the plan will be prioritized by future governors.
“Goals are critical,” said Mark Gold, director of water scarcity solutions at the Natural Resources Defense Council. “But they need to be followed up with implementation plans, with budgets, funding mechanisms, milestones and metrics.”
Gold recalls Garcetti’s promise in 2019 that all of L.A.’s wastewater would be recycled by 2035.
“That is nowhere close,” said Gold, but two other goals might be within reach. One is to have 70% of L.A.’s water locally sourced by 2035, the other is for 80% of county water to be local by 2045, using increased stormwater capture, recycled wastewater, groundwater remediation and conservation.
When he ran Heal the Bay, Gold implemented an annual report card for ocean water quality at various beaches. Maybe we ought to use the same system every time a politician takes a bow for introducing a bold, far-reaching goal.
Without the measuring stick, Gold said, “you end up looking back and saying, ‘remember when we were going to do this and that and it never happened?’ You have to continuously revisit and grade yourself on how you’re doing.”
Plans for the 2028 Olympics and Paralympics are linked to a fleet of buses to transport people to and from venues like SoFi Stadium to avoid a traffic meltdown. The plan includes a $2-billion ask of the Trump administration to lease 2,700 buses to join Metro’s fleet of about 2,400.
(Deborah Netburn / Los Angeles Times)
While it’s true, Manville said, that “L.A. seems to be better at kicking off grand plans than seeing them through, that’s not unique to Los Angeles.”
He cited “Abundance” as one of several recent books making the case that “lots of cities in blue states can’t seem to get out of their own way.”
The failures of virtuous Democrats are indeed on full display in California and beyond. But the other side of the aisle is not without its own sins, beginning with cult-like denial of climate change and, speaking of empty promises, undying devotion to a man who said he would end the war in Ukraine before he took office and bring down grocery prices on Day One.
Would you rather live in a state crazy enough to still think it can build a bullet train and outlaw carbon, or in one of the many hurricane-battered states crazy enough to think this is a swell time to get rid of FEMA?
If you’re reaching for the stars, making it to the moon isn’t a bad start.
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Commentary: Trump’s order on homelessness gets it all wrong, and here’s why
President Trump has the answer to homelessness.
Forcibly clear the streets.
On Thursday, he signed an executive order to address “endemic vagrancy” and end “crime and disorder on our streets.” He called for the use of “civil commitments” to get those who suffer from mental illness or addiction into “humane treatment.”
Steve Lopez
Steve Lopez is a California native who has been a Los Angeles Times columnist since 2001. He has won more than a dozen national journalism awards and is a four-time Pulitzer finalist.
This comes after last year’s U.S. Supreme Court ruling making it legal for cities to punish people for being homeless, even if they have nowhere to go.
There’s some truth in what he says, and California’s record on housing and homelessness is ripe for criticism. I’ve watched too many people suffer from addiction and mental illness and asked why the help is so slow to arrive. But I also know there are no simple answers for either crisis, and bluster is no substitute for desperately needed resources.
Like a lot of what Trump does, this is another case of grandstanding. In the meantime, the Washington Post reported Thursday that the “Trump administration has slashed more than $1 billion in COVID-era grants administered by the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration and is proposing to slash hundreds of millions more in agency grants.”
Wendell Blassingame sits at the entrance to San Julian Park in downtown Los Angeles in 2023.
(Wally Skalij/Los Angeles Times)
As it happens, I was in the middle of a column on the latest Los Angeles homeless count when news of Trump’s executive order broke. I had just spent time with two homeless women to hear about their predicaments, and none of what Trump is proposing comes close to addressing their needs, which are tragically commonplace.
Namely, they’re living in poverty and can’t afford a place to live.
In his executive order, Trump said that “nearly two-thirds of homeless individuals report having used hard drugs … in their lifetimes. An equally large share of homeless individuals reported suffering from mental health conditions.”
I don’t know where he got those numbers, but truth and accuracy are not hallmarks of this administration.
No doubt, addiction and mental illness are significant factors, and more intervention is needed.
But that’s more complicated than he thinks, especially given the practical and legal issues surrounding coercive treatment — and it’s not going to solve the problem.
When the latest homeless count in Los Angeles was released, a slight decline from a year ago was regarded by many as a positive sign. But when Eli Veitzer of Jewish Family Service L.A. dug into the numbers, he found something both unsurprising and deeply disturbing.
The number of homeless people 65 and older hadn’t gone down. It had surged, in both the city and county of Los Angeles.
“This isn’t new this year. It’s a trend over the last couple of years,” said Veitzer, whose nonprofit provides meals, housing assistance and various other services to clients. “It’s meaningful, and it’s real, and these people are at the highest risk of mortality while they’re on the streets.”
The numbers from the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority showed a 3.4% decrease in the total homeless population in the city, but a 17.6% increase among those 65 and older. The county numbers showed a 3.99% decrease overall, but an 8.59% increase in the 65 and older group.
In the city, the increase over two years was from 3,427 in 2023 to 4,680 this year — up 37%.
Reliable research has shown that among older adults who become homeless, the primary reason is the combination of poverty and high housing costs, rather than mental illness or addiction.
A man smokes inside a tent on Los Angeles’ Skid Row in March 2020.
(Marcio Jose Sanchez / Associated Press)
“They or their spouse lost their job, they or their spouse got sick, their marriage broke up or their spouse or parent died,” Dr. Margot Kushel of UC San Francisco’s Homelessness and Housing Initiative was telling me several hours before Trump’s executive order was issued.
Her team’s landmark study, released two years ago (and covered by my colleague Anita Chabria), found that nearly half the state’s homeless residents were 50 and older, and that participants in the study reported a median monthly household income of $960.
“The results … confirm that far too many Californians experience homelessness because they cannot afford housing,” Kushel said at the time.
Among the older population, Veitzer said, the jump in homelessness comes against the backdrop of federal and local budget cuts that will make it harder to reverse the trend. And harder for nonprofits, which rely in part on public funding, to keep providing group meals, home-delivered meals, transportation, social services and housing support.
“Every provider I’ve talked to in the city of L.A. is cutting meal programs,” Veitzer said. “We’re going to have to close two of our 13 meal sites, and last year we closed three. We used to have 16, and now we’re down to 11.”
On Wednesday, I went to one of the sites that’s still up and running on Santa Monica Boulevard, just west of the 405, and met Jane Jefferies, 69. She told me she’s been camping in her vehicle since February when living with her brother became impossible for various reasons. She now pulls into a Safe Parking L.A. lot each night to bed down.
Jefferies said she collects about $1,400 a month in Social Security, which isn’t enough to get her into an apartment. At the senior center, she uses her own equipment to make buttons that she sells on the Venice boardwalk, where she can make up to $200 on a good weekend.
But that’s still not enough to cover the cost of housing, she told me, and she’s given up on government help.
“All the funding has been cut, and I don’t know if it’s because a lot of the city and state funding is subsidized by the federal government. We all know Trump hates California,” she said.
As Veitzer put it: “There’s nowhere near enough low-income senior housing in L.A. County. Wait lists open up periodically,” with far more applicants than housing units. “And then they close.”
His agency delivers a daily meal to Vancie Davis, 73, who lives in a van at Penmar Park in Venice. Her next-door neighbor is her son, Thomas Williamson, 51, who lives in his car.
Davis was in the front seat of the van when I arrived, hugging her dog, Heart. Her left leg was amputated below the knee two years ago because of an infection, she told me.
Davis said she and another son were living in a trailer in Oregon, but the owner shut off the utilities and changed the locks. She said she reached out to Williamson, who told her, “I’ve got a van for you, so you’ll have a place to live, but it’s going to be rough. And it is. It’s very, very rough.”
I’ve heard so many variations of stories like these over the years, I’ve lost count.
The magnitude that exists in the wealthiest nation in history is a disgrace, and a sad commentary on an economic system and public policy that have served to widen, rather than narrow, the inequity gap.
On Thursday, Trump’s executive order on homelessness grabbed headlines but will do nothing for Jane Jefferies or Vancie Davis and for thousands like them. We know the interventions that can work, Kushel said, but with deep cuts in the works, we’re moving in the wrong direction.
Davis’ son Thomas told Times photographer Genaro Molina about another person who lives in a vehicle and has been a neighbor of theirs in the parking lot.
She wasn’t there Wednesday, but we’ll check back.
It’s a 91-year-old woman.
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Commentary: I took a week off to escape the steady hum of grim news. It didn’t go as planned
I took a week of vacation to relax, clear my head and stop obsessing over depressing news.
I hear frequently from people who say that, for their peace of mind, they’re tuning out the news altogether, so I tried it for a couple of days. Opened a book. Walked the dog.
Steve Lopez
Steve Lopez is a California native who has been a Los Angeles Times columnist since 2001. He has won more than a dozen national journalism awards and is a four-time Pulitzer finalist.
But I’m in the news business, and I felt like a hypocrite, so I kept sneaking peeks. As it turns out, that wasn’t healthy.
You can’t follow a single 24-hour news cycle without questioning your own sanity.
Do we really live in a country in which the president posts fake videos of a predecessor being arrested?
In which a dead man’s sex trafficking crimes dominate White House news for days on end?
In which the federal government has made it a priority to arrest tamale vendors and fire meteorologists?
President Trump holds a gavel after signing the “One Big Beautiful Bill Act” at the White House in Washington, D.C., on July 4.
(Brendan Smialowski / Pool / AFP via Getty Images)
In which the Social Security Administration sends us emails fawning over the president and making false claims, the White House jokes and memes about immigration raids and the Department of Homeland Security triggers a trolling war with social media posts about its version of national heritage?
I have a weekly goal of avoiding alcoholic beverages on Mondays, Tuesdays and Thursdays, but in this political culture, what chance do I have?
With lots of time to practice, I picked up my guitar, but events of the last few weeks continued to haunt me.
The “Big Beautiful Bill” that Trump signed into law on July 4 will add trillions to the national debt, heap tax breaks on those who need them least and rip healthcare coverage away from the neediest. As a result, L.A. County’s health services are anticipating federal cutbacks in the hundreds of millions of dollars.
“We can’t survive this big a cut,” Barbara Ferrer, L.A. County’s head of public health, told the Times for a story by Rebecca Ellis and Niamh Ordner. She added: “I’ve been around a long time. I’ve never actually seen this much disdain for public health.”
Dr. Jonathan LoPresti, who worked at County/USC for decades and is an associate professor of clinical medicine at the Keck School of Medicine at USC, is alarmed. He sent me an a copy of an opinion piece he’s writing, which includes a warning that county hospitals could “again be overrun with the poor … and homeless, leading to further hospital and ER overcrowding, delayed discharges and reduction in routine health maintenance … That could lead to an increase in community TB cases and more serious complications of treatable disease, as well as deaths.”
He added this:
“How many public deaths are people willing to accept?”
There is no limit, judging by crystal clear signals from Washington.
I think we can all agree that historic rainstorms, hurricanes and wildfires in the United States and the rest of the world will continue to kill thousands.
Here’s a synopsis of the Trump response:
The U.S. climate change website has been shut down.
Protesters gather on the National Mall for the “Hands Off” protest against the administration of President Trump on April 5.
(Dominic Gwinn / Middle East Images / AFP via Getty Images)
The administration says the Federal Emergency Management Agency should be eliminated, and the urban search and rescue chief has resigned, citing chaos and dangerous disaster response delays.
Layoffs and buyouts have reduced National Weather Service ranks by 14% despite warnings of dire consequences.
So I swam laps, thinking that having my head under might help, but it only made me feeling like I was drowning.
Hundreds of probationary workers at the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration have been fired, and the fulltime staff will be trimmed by 2,000.
These cuts, and the elimination of federal support for scientific research, are damaging in obvious ways. But when I asked UCLA professor Alex Hall what’s most disturbing, here’s what the director of the Center for Climate Science had to say:
“I feel like the thing that’s most chilling is the way the word ‘climate’ has become a dirty word.”
In other words, the politicization of the subject — Trump and supporters insist human-caused climate change is either exaggerated or a hoax — has created a form of censorship.
“That’s where we really start to face dangers — when people can’t talk about something,” said Hall, who has been studying the link between climate change and California wildfires.
I may be a little biased on this topic. My daughter just graduated from college with a degree in earth science. What she and thousands like her are being told, essentially, is, “Good for you, but the planet’s health is neither a concern nor a priority. If you’re looking for work, the Border Patrol is hiring, and cryptocurrency might be a good career path.”
So there you have it. That’s how I spent my summer vacation, failing miserably in my attempt to look the other way.
But all was not lost.
I played pickleball a couple of times, in Glendale and Los Feliz, and suffered no major injuries. I took my beagle Philly to Rosie’s Dog Beach in Long Beach and watched him race around like the happiest hound in the world. And, borrowing from Trump’s penchant for cutbacks, I’ve trimmed my list of no-alcohol days from three to two.
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Commentary: In an L.A. park, Trump unleashed his latest show of farce: The Battle of the Photo Op
La migra spread across MacArthur Park yesterday morning like a platoon ready for war.
Federal agents on horseback with a white steed in the middle trotted through a soccer field. Others dressed like they were ready for Fallujah walked across lawns that just minutes earlier hosted a kid’s summer camp. Humvees complete with gun turrets parked on Wilshire Boulevard.
A Black Hawk helicopter buzzed above.
It was meant to be a show of force. It was more of a farce.
The park was mostly empty thanks to social media posts that had been warning Los Angeles about the coming incursion since Sunday. A furious Mayor Karen Bass arrived, got on the phone with U.S. Border Patrol Chief Gregory Bovino — who was strolling around while a photographer took glam shots — and told him to pull back. Activists showed up instead of the regular crowd to laugh at and film la migra and cuss them outta there.
It was like the climactic scene in “Blazing Saddles,” when incompetent villain Hedley Lamarr tried to invade a small town with the baddest of hombres besides him only to find a Potemkin village. The Non-Battle of MacArthur Park even had a “cowboy” (those quote marks are getting some serious “air” time as I write this)With his straw cowboy bat and rifle slung over his shoulder, Assistant Chief Border Patrol Agent David Kim seemed to be channeling his inner Alex Villanueva, the ex-L.A. County sheriff who wore Stetsons anywhere and everywhere in urban L.A. because he thought that showed power.
This was the Battle of the Photo Op. Written in D.C. and paid for by taxpayers.
For the past 30 days, President Donald Trump has laid siege to L.A. like a potentate trying to quash a far-away rebel province. Over 1,600 people detained, citizens and noncitizens alike. A parade of his lackeys — Department of Homeland Security head Kristi Noem, Vice President JD Vance, border policy advisor Tom Homan — parachuted in to lecture L.A. about how out of control it is and vow retribution. California’s senior U.S. senator, Alex Padilla, briefly handcuffed for daring to question Noem during a press conference.
Trump and his troupe keep squawking about getting “the worst of the worst,” but they’re mostly not. This operation doesn’t seem to make much of a distinction between snatching an immigrant with a criminal record or a guy armed with a stockpile of tamales he’s trying to sell to make a living.
Masked men grabbing anyone and everyone in the fashion of paramilitary squads from countries we deem uncivilized. Straight-up invasions of workplaces and residential neighborhoods, parks and street corners. Thousands of members of the National Guard and hundreds of Marines called up.
What the city is weathering is supposed to be a warning to all other immigrant-friendly municipalities across the country: submit, or else.
Well, L.A. chose the something else. And Trump and his goons are getting more and more angry — and reckless.
Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem speaks to the National Guard before their lunch at the Wilshire Federal Building in Los Angeles on June 12.
(Luke Johnson / Los Angeles Times)
People are scared, sure — even terrified. That’s part of Trump’s strategy, along with making life so miserable that he hopes Angelenos will turn on each other. Instead, they’re uniting and hunkering down for more. Support networks and neighborhood watchdog groups are blooming across the region. Everyone with a smartphone and a social media account is now a reporter, capturing la migra at its worst and letting the world know what’s really going on. Lawsuits are being filed. More and more average citizens are joining the resistance.
What’s happening reminds me of the concluding line Lisa Simpson sang when Springfield Nuclear Power Plant workers went on strike against Mr. Burns and his heavies:
They may have the strength, but we have the power.
I get it, America: You think what’s happening in L.A. will never come to you. And you sort of like seeing the big, bad City of Angels getting smacked around with promises of even worse things to come. There’s a reason sports fans chant “Beat L.A.” and not “Beat Salt Lake City” or even New York.
But what happened yesterday at MacArthur Park is a microcosm of Trump’s vision for the rest of the country: a massive show of nada that does absolutely nothing to make life better for Americans. A gigantic waste of money. Spectacle over substance. Venom for anyone who dares speak out.
That should concern anyone who cares about a functioning democracy. Including L.A. haters.
The last month of raids across Southern California has shown that when the going gets tough, Trump goes for the easy. Sure, the Department of Homeland Security and its toxic alphabet soup of agencies participating in Trump’s deportation deluge are churning out social media posts featuring grainy photos of some of the people they’ve caught along with their alleged crimes. But that’s a way to mask the reality that these people taken in raids are mostly not criminals. A Times analysis of data obtained by the Deportation Data Project at UC Berkeley Law found that nearly 70% of those arrested by Immigration and Customs Enforcement from June 1 through June 10 had no criminal convictions.
The sad irony about what happened yesterday in MacArthur Park is that if ever there was a place in L.A. that might have welcomed a helpful assist from the feds … it’s MacArthur Park.
As my fellow columnista Steve Lopez has written about for years, it’s a jewel of a green space with serious problems that city officials have allowed to fester over the decades and has made it a no-go zone for many Angelenos. Gangs have long extorted businesses in the neighborhood and terrorized everyone else — including immigrants. Too many unhoused people pass through with nowhere else to go. Drug use is as prevalent as sunbathing: When I walked through it earlier this year on the way to Langer’s for lunch, I saw a man smoke a meth pipe within eyesight of an LAPD officer who didn’t even blink.
But this wasn’t about saving MacArthur Park from the bad guys. Instead, the deployment of masked troops in tactical gear showed Trump and his berserkers only care about optics, up to and including a man on horseback leading his fellow cavalry in a straight line while holding an American flag as colleagues whipped out their smartphones. The charade looked like something out of a Western movie — American military subjugating yet another Native American tribe.
Federal immigration agents near MacArthur Park on July 7.
(Carlin Stiehl / Los Angeles Times)
More is going to come, most likely worse. Trump’s Bloated Bullplop Bill has allocated $170 billion to immigration enforcement. Homan is relishing the idea of increasing the number of ICE agents from 5,000 to 15,000 — as if all that migra will improve the economy or make up for the rise in taxes and loss in Medicaid that millions of American citizens will suffer in order to support an agency whose increased budget will put it above the military of most of the world’s countries.
Are you paying attention yet, America?
After the MacArthur Park action, Trump’s disciples proclaimed victory. Bovino bragged to Fox News reporter Bill Melugin — the de facto media stenographer for Trump’s migra mission — that he told L.A. Mayor Karen Bass during their phone call, “Better get used to us now, ’cause this is going to be normal very soon. We will go anywhere, anytime we want in Los Angeles.” White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller went on Fox News later to thunder, “The Democrat Party’s objective is to flood the West with millions upon millions of illegals from the developing world” as footage of what happened earlier that day rolled next to him.
Big words from little men who act like they’re living some “Apocalypse Now” fantasy.
I preferred what L.A. councilmember Eunisses Hernandez — whose district encompasses MacArthur Park — said shortly after the sweep at a City Hall press conference, something as true as the sun rising in the east: “We are the canary in the coal mine. What you see happening at MacArthur Park is coming to you.”
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Commentary: Trump priorities clear: Derail medical and scientific research, invade MacArthur Park
The nation’s priorities are now crystal clear.
We are adding ICE and Border Patrol agents, activating troops and invading American neighborhoods, including L.A.’s MacArthur Park on Monday morning.
Meanwhile, we are getting rid of medical researchers and weather forecasters, even as extreme and deadly weather events become more common.
Steve Lopez
Steve Lopez is a California native who has been a Los Angeles Times columnist since 2001. He has won more than a dozen national journalism awards and is a four-time Pulitzer finalist.
You would think — based on the priorities in President Trump’s budget, tax and policy bill approved last week — that immigration is the greatest threat to our health and security.
It’s not.
But billions of dollars have been added for border and ICE agents while billions more have been trimmed from medical, climate and weather-related resources.
On Monday morning, federal agents on horseback and in armored vehicles descended on MacArthur Park in a show of force. Children playing in the park were ushered to safer ground, Mayor Karen Bass said at a news conference.
“Frankly it is outrageous and un-American that we have federal armed vehicles in our parks when nothing is going on in our parks,” Bass said, adding that she didn’t know if anyone was even detained.
“It’s a political agenda of provoking fear and terror,” she said.
The event “looked like a staging for a TikTok video,” said City Council President Marqueece Harris-Dawson.
MacArthur Park has a sizable undocumented immigrant population, and a lot of big problems to tackle — homelessness, a wide-open drug trade and gang activity. On some days areas of the park were unusable for families. First responders rolled out on overdose calls, addicts took over an alley, and merchants struggled to stay open amid all the mayhem.
In December, people sit at the corner of Alvarado Street and Wilshire Boulevard, an area known for illegal drug use in the Westlake neighborhood.
(Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Times)
As I found last year over the course of several months on the ground, local officials waited too long and moved too slowly in response to the long-festering crisis.
But a silly military parade isn’t going to help, unless they actually were going after undocumented drug lords — but there was no immediate evidence of that.
If the federal government wanted to help, L.A. could use more support for housing, drug interdiction and treatment. It could use a more stable and equitable economy that’s not undermined by tariff uncertainties and the president’s taunts of trading partners.
As we know in California, countless industries rely on undocumented laborers. It’s an open secret, and has been for decades, not just in the Golden State but across the nation, and yet Washington has been unable to put together a sensible immigration reform package over the years.
Congress got close last fall, but do I need to remind you what happened?
That’s right. Trump threatened lackey GOP Congressman, ordering the spineless ninnies to pull their support.
Every time I see a helicopter now in L.A. — and as we know, they’re like mosquitoes up there — I wonder if Trump has sent in the Air Force, with bombers coming in behind them.
My colleague Rachel Uranga recently reported that “ICE has not released data on criminal records of detainees booked into its custody.” But nonpublic data from the Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank, “showed about 9 out of 10 had never been convicted of a violent or property crime, and 30% have no criminal record. The most frequent crimes are immigration and traffic offenses.”
It’s nothing to warrant the terrorizing of neighborhoods and communities, nothing to warrant armed, masked agents of unknown identities and agencies roaming our streets and nabbing workers at car washes, Home Depots and restaurants.
Federal immigration agents near MacArthur Park in the Westlake area on Monday.
(Carlin Stiehl / Los Angeles Times)
It’s almost as terrifying as several other real and existential threats:
An anti-vax crackpot is in charge of the nation’s healthcare and medical research system.
Trump’s Big Bonehead Bill calls for an $18-billion cut for the National Institutes of Health.
Some of the leading researchers in medicine and science are leaving the country in a trend that could end up being a catastrophic brain drain.
I got an email the other day from the Social Security Administration informing me the “(SSA) is celebrating the passage of the One Big, Beautiful Bill.” I thought it was a joke at first — a satirical take on the rise of an authoritarian regime.
But it was real, and so are the cuts to the National Weather Service, to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, to the Federal Emergency Management Agency.
Meteorologists say extreme weather events like the rainstorms that led to a river surge and killed dozens of children and adults in Texas’ Hill Country over the holiday weekend are going to become more common.
Florida had a record-tying number of hurricanes in 2024 with 11 of them, and $130 billion in damage.
Wildfires destroyed thousands of homes in Southern California last year and are becoming ever-more common around the world.
Temperatures in the Mediterranean Sea smashed records for June, and scientists are warning of dire impacts on sea life and food chains.
To the president and his minions, the crisis is overblown.
It’s fake news.
And the federal government can’t be distracted from its core mission.
The week is young, and there’s no telling which L.A. neighborhood will be invaded next.
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Commentary: Bass defends her turf: ‘Let me be clear: I won’t be intimidated’ by Trump
The president of the United States, who seems to enjoy nothing more than playing the bully, is picking on Los Angeles. But L.A. Mayor Karen Bass, not known as a public brawler until recently, is ducking punches and throwing her own jabs and uppercuts.
She has accused President Trump of initiating the protests he condemned, and called Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem a liar for suggesting L.A. was a city of mayhem.
I had a conversation with her Tuesday about what it’s like to deal with a president like this one, but before we chatted, she stepped to the podium at City Hall, flanked by labor, business and faith leaders, and defended her turf again.
“This is essentially an all-out assault against Los Angeles,” Bass said, denouncing the U.S. Justice Department’s lawsuit accusing her and the City Council of hindering the battle against “a crisis of illegal immigration.” It’s a political stunt, Bass said several times, denying that the city’s sanctuary city protections are unlawful.
Steve Lopez
Steve Lopez is a California native who has been a Los Angeles Times columnist since 2001. He has won more than a dozen national journalism awards and is a four-time Pulitzer finalist.
“We know that Los Angeles is the test case,” Bass said. “And we will stand strong, and we do so because the people snatched off city streets and chased through parking lots are our neighbors, our family members, and they are Angelenos. Let me be clear. I won’t be intimidated.”
This has not been the best year of Bass’ political career. It began with the destruction of Pacific Palisades by a wildfire that started while Bass was out of town, and continued with the second-guessing of L.A.’s disaster preparedness and questions about who would lead the rebuilding effort.
Throw in the lingering catastrophe of widespread homelessness and wrangling over a city budget deficit, and it was looking as though Bass might be vulnerable in a 2026 reelection bid.
Then came the arrival of federal agents and troops, with raids beginning June 6, and Bass started to find her footing by going against type.
“Her natural instinct is to be a coalition builder — to govern by consensus,” said Fernando Guerra, a political science professor at Loyola Marymount University. But that doesn’t work with Trump, “so she’s recalibrating and saying, you know, the only thing this guy understands is confrontation.”
Pomona College politics professor Sara Sadhwani said Trump is attacking “the heart and core of Los Angeles,” and there may be unintended consequences, given the way the president’s actions are unifying many Angelenos. “I think the vast majority of folks in Los Angeles, but also throughout the state, can agree that what’s happening now is not OK and runs counter to our values,” Sadhwani continued. “And Bass is showing incredibly strong leadership.”
President Trump shook hands with Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass after a fire briefing in Pacific Palisades on Jan. 24.
(Mark Schiefelbein / Associated Press)
Even a half dozen Republican state legislators have joined the opposition, sending a letter to Trump suggesting he focus on arresting actual criminals rather than going after people who make up an essential component of the economy.
As Sadhwani noted, Republican lawmakers for years have lamented federal overreach and argued in favor of state’s rights and local control. And yet the Trump Administration is set on telling California and Los Angeles how to govern themselves, most recently on sanctuary protections, despite court arguments that they’re protected under the 10th Amendment.
After Tuesday’s press conference, Bass retreated to her office and told me her support for immigrants began with her work as an activist in the 1970s.
“This is fundamentally who I am. But of course, having a blended family” also factors into her politics on immigration. “My ex-husband was a Chicano activist … I have other family members that are married to people from the Philippines, Korea, Japan. I have a Greek side to my family.”
When gathered, she said, her family “looks like the General Assembly of the United Nations.”
And that’s what Los Angeles looks like, with storylines that crisscross the globe and transcend borders.
“I don’t see anybody [here] anywhere calling for deportations, whereas you could imagine in some cities this would be a very divisive issue,” Bass said.
I told her I hear quite often from people asking: “What don’t you understand about the word illegal?” or from people arguing that their relatives waited and immigrated legally.
I understand those perspectives, I told Bass. But I also understand context — namely, the desire of people to seek better opportunities for their children, and the lure of doing so in a United States that relies upon immigrant labor and tacitly allows it while hypocritically condemning it.
While serving in Congress, Bass said, she witnessed the toll wrought by the separation of families along the border. She met people who “carried the trauma throughout their lives, the insecurity, the feeling of abandonment.”
At the very least, the mayor said, federal agents “should identify themselves and they also should have warrants, and they should stop randomly picking people up off the street. The original intent, remember, [was to go after] the hardened criminals. Where are the hardened criminals? They’re chasing them through parking lots at Home Depot? They’re washing cars? I don’t think so.”
U.S. Marines post guard at the Federal Building at the corner of Veteran Avenue and Wilshire Boulevard in Los Angeles on June 19.
(Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Times)
In fact, the vast majority of arrestees in Los Angeles have no criminal records.
As for the cost of the raids in L.A. — by an administration that made a vow to shrink government — Bass wanted to make a few points.
“You think about the young men and women in the National Guard. They leave their families, work, their school. For what?” she asked. “It’s a misuse of the troops. And the same thing with the Marines. They’re not trained to deal with anything happening on the street. They’re trained to fight to kill the enemy in foreign lands.”
While we were talking, Bass got an urgent call from her daughter, Yvette Lechuga, who works as senior administrative assistant at Mount St. Mary’s University. Lechuga said a woman was apprehended while getting off a shuttle.
“It seems like ICE grabbed our student,” Lechuga said.
Bass said her staff would look into it.
“We were on quasi-lockdown for a while,” Lechuga said.
“Jesus Christ,” said the mayor.
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Commentary: Lake Tahoe tragedy provides a life-or-death lesson
TAHOE CITY — Today I offer boating tips for Lake Tahoe — actually, for any body of water.
That’s not one of my usual column topics. Normally I write about California government and politics.
But this time I’m writing about boating because I’ve been wincing after reading and watching news reports of the horrific accident on Tahoe that killed eight people June 21.
Moreover, the Fourth of July means we’re in the heart of boating season. There are 4 million recreational boaters in California, according to the state Division of Boating and Waterways. There’s an average of 514 boating accidents a year. And July is the worst month.
I’ve been boating at Tahoe for 55 years, and on some water since I was a teen.
These are my basic rules for safety and enjoyment, at least in a vessel up to about 30 feet. My Tahoe boats mostly have been 22 to 24 feet.
For starters, if Lake Tahoe winds are already blowing at 10 mph and it’s not even noon, be smart. Don’t venture out in a recreational powerboat. The water’s likely to get much choppier in the afternoon.
If you’re out there and see white caps forming, head for shore.
If lots of sailboats show up, you don’t belong on the water with them. Get off.
And another thing: Don’t pay much attention to the manufacturer’s claim of how many people a boat will hold. Boat makers tend to exaggerate. If it says 10 people will fit, figure on maybe eight tops.
Sure, 10 may be able to squeeze aboard, but the extra weight causes the boat to ride deeper in the water and become more vulnerable to taking on water in heavy swells. That can lead to capsizing. And all those passengers squirming around makes driving more difficult because of the constantly changing weight balance.
But most important: Monitor the weather forecasts before you even get near the water.
Lake Tahoe is big and beautiful — 22 miles long and 12 miles wide, at 6,224 feet in the Sierra mountains. It holds enough water to cover all of California by 14 inches. Two-thirds of the lake is in California, one-third in Nevada.
Weather patterns vary. Scary winds and thunderstorms can be at one end of the lake, and calmer water and blue skies at the other.
Even on calm mornings, Lake Tahoe’s weather and boating conditions can turn hazardous quickly.
(Max Whittaker / For The Times)
My wincing at reports of the multi-fatality accident and many other boating mishaps that Saturday afternoon off the south and west shores stem from repeated references to all of it being caused by a sudden, unexpected storm.
The intensity of the storm may have been unexpected — north winds up to 45 mph, producing eight-foot waves. But winds had been forecast by the National Weather Service in the high teens and into the 20s. And that should have been enough warning for boaters: Stay off the water.
The person who made the most sense after the tragedy was Mary Laub, a retired financial analyst who lives in Minden, Nev., over the steep hill from South Lake Tahoe. She and her husband keep a 26-foot Regal cabin cruiser in Tahoe Keys on the south shore. And she habitually watches weather forecasts.
She had planned to go for a cruise that Saturday but dropped the idea after seeing the forecast.
“The afternoon winds pick up at Tahoe. If they’re approaching 10 [mph] before noon, I don’t go out,” she told me. “I saw that forecast and said, ‘No way.’
“If there’s any whisper of wind, I don’t go out. We’ve been caught out there before. I don’t take a chance.”
The people who died were in a practically new 27-foot Chris-Craft Launch, a high-end, gorgeous open-bow boat. It was the vessel’s third time on the water. Ten people were aboard, mostly in their 60s and 70s. They were relatives and lifelong friends, celebrating a woman’s 71st birthday. She was among the fatalities.
They were trying to return from popular Emerald Bay to their west side home in midafternoon when eight-foot swells swamped the boat, deadening the engine and capsizing the vessel off rocky Rubicon Point near D.L. Bliss State Park. They were tossed into the abnormally cold water and presumably drowned, perhaps paralyzed by hypothermia.
A mother and daughter in the party, both wearing life jackets, were rescued by a Washoe County sheriff’s team. Whether the others were wearing life jackets hadn’t been revealed as of this writing.
Meanwhile, boats all along the southwest shore were being swamped or ripped from their moorings and piling up on rocks or beaches, often crashing into other vessels.
One four-person crew in a 24-foot open-bow MasterCraft grabbed their life jackets, wisely abandoned the boat and swam to shore. They scampered up rocky cliffs in their bare feet to safety. The boat was practically totaled.
I called meteorologist Dawn Johnson at the National Weather Service in Reno.
She said the forecast for that Saturday afternoon had been for winds up to 20 mph and gusts to “25 or so.”
There also was up to a 25% chance of thunderstorms. “If you have thunderstorms on the lake, make sure you get off the water,” Johnson said. “You have a higher risk of being struck by lightning on open water.”
There were strong winds Friday night, she recalled, but by 11 a.m. Saturday they had dropped to 5 to 10 mph. Then they picked up as forecast.
“We see winds gust at that magnitude multiple times a month, most likely in the afternoon,” she said. “Sustained winds reach 25 to 30 mph.”
But normally they produce waves of only 2 to 4 feet, she added. “We’re trying to figure out exactly what happened.”
Four-foot waves are a hurricane in my book.
And Mother Nature doesn’t care about a boater’s weekend plans.
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‘Squid Game’ finale: The wealthy win and nice guys finish last
Rich people suck.
The message was loud and clear when Netflix‘s Korean thriller “Squid Game” arrived in 2021. Imagining wealth and class disparity at the heart of a high-stakes competition, it featured cash-strapped contestants playing a series of children’s games to the death while uber-wealthy spectators bet on their odds of survival. The show’s masked elites watched the carnage from a luxe, concealed spectator box, chomping on cigars and chortling as player after player met a gruesome death. The Korean-language show became the streamer’s most watched series ever.
Comeuppance for the hideously affluent seemed imminent and likely at the hands of protagonist Seong Gi-hun (Lee Jung-jae). The winner of Season 1’s “Squid Game” deserved vengeance after surviving a series of horrific scenarios — a hopscotch-type match played on a fragile glass bridge above a deadly chasm, a red light-green light contest where players who moved at the wrong time were “eliminated” by machine gun fire. He watched as good people were killed by pink guards, other contestants and their own stupid actions.
But no. The last six “Squid Game” episodes, now streaming on Netflix, did something entirely unsatisfying. They veered from the prospect of timely, eat-the-rich vengeance porn to unflattering commentary about the rest of us, the other 99% who aren’t Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg or Jeff Bezos. What did we ever do to deserve a lethal game of double dutch with two giant mechanical children swinging a 10-ton metal rod in place of a jump rope? A lot, apparently.
“Squid Game” shows that under the right circumstances, regular folks are just as greedy and morally corrupt as the obscenely prosperous, no matter if their money problems stem from unforeseen medical bills, wanton gambling or generational poverty. Press the little guy or gal hard enough and they’re just as ruthless as the mogul that’s suppressing them.
The VIPs in “Squid Game” Season 3, who watch as the contestants trample one another.
(Dong-won Han / NohJu Han / Netflix)
Season 3 picks up exactly where 2 left off. Gi-hun, who’d found his way back in the clandestine gaming complex (situated inside a mountain on a remote island), is Player 456 again among a new round of contestants. He’d planned to infiltrate the operation from inside, staging a coup against the VIPs and Front Man (Lee Byung-hun) who run the games. But now it’s clear he’s failed. He’s cornered by guards, the players who fought alongside him are dead, and he’s thrown back in with the remaining players, many of whom survived because they’re the most craven of the group.
Free and fair elections are at the heart of every democracy, or so “Squid Game” reminds us each time the bedraggled players are asked for their vote regarding the next round: Continue to compete and thin the herd for a larger reward or stop and split their winnings with their fellow contestants? Majority rules, and each time the group opt to sacrifice their lives — and everyone else’s — in pursuit of money. Series creator Hwang Dong-hyuk has spoken about his dwindling faith in humanity as it relates to his concerns about South Korea’s democracy, and you’ll hear him loud and clear in Season 3: Voting is power, but look what happens when the population increasingly puts its own self-interest above that of the greater good. It’s a scenario that should be recognizable to Americans by now.
“Squid Game” Season 3 takes that idea to the extreme, and quite fearlessly, Hwang puts the series to bed without punishing the rich. Instead he dares to lay bare a truth that’s become all too apparent of late: Wealth wins over morality and money trumps accountability. Nice guys not only finish last, they wind up pulverized like everyone else below a certain tax bracket, no matter their dedication toward humanity.
The Korean show’s run has ended, but not before a finale that alludes to a Hollywood sequel. The episode, set in Los Angeles, shows a familiar scene. A down-and-out man is approached by a mysterious, well-dressed figure who uses a simple kid’s game to test his want of money against his tolerance for pain and humiliation.
Those who’ve watched “Squid Game” will recognize it as the beginning of Gi-hun’s journey, which ended with a sliver of redemption in an abyss of darkness. The mysterious figure appears to be a recruiter for a new, English-language “Squid Game.” She’s played by an A-list celebrity — Cate Blanchett — operating in a city renowned for its self-involvement and privilege. “Squid Game” has a whole new playing field.
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Commentary: Archbishop Gomez starts to stand up for L.A. right when the city needs him
For years in this columna, I have repeatedly posed a simple challenge to Archbishop José H. Gomez:
Stand up for Los Angeles, because L.A. needs you.
The head of the largest Catholic diocese in the United States has largely stood athwart the liberal city he’s supposed to minister since he assumed his seat in 2011 but especially since the COVID-19 pandemic. He has railed against “woke” culture and refused to meet with progressive Catholic groups. When the Dodgers in 2023 honored the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence, a drag troupe that wears nun’s habits while raising funds for the marginalized, he led a special Mass at the Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels that amounted to a public exorcism.
Most perplexingly, the Mexico-born archbishop stayed largely quiet as the Herod that’s Donald Trump promised to clamp down on legal immigration and deport people without legal status during his 2024 presidential run. As head of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops at the end of last decade, Gomez wrote and spoke movingly about the need to treat all immigrants with dignity and fix this country’s broken system once and for all. But his gradual turn to the right as archbishop has gone so far that the National Catholic Reporter, where I’m an occasional contributor, labeled him a “failed culture warrior” when they anointed him their Newsmaker for that year.
Gomez’s devolution was especially dispiriting because L.A. Catholic leaders have taught their American peers how to embrace Latino immigrants ever since Archbishop John Cantwell helped refugees from Mexico’s Cristero War resettle in the city in the 1920s. Clerical legends like Luis Olivares and Richard Estrada transformed La Placita Church near Olvera Street into a sanctuary for Central American immigrants during the 1980s and 1990s in the face of threats from the feds. Gomez’s predecessor, Cardinal Roger Mahony, long drew national attention for attacking anti-immigrant legislation during his sermons and marching alongside immigrant rights protesters, a cross to bear that Gomez never warmed up to.
So when L.A. began to push back against Donald Trump’s immigration raids earlier this month only to see an onerous federal crackdown, I expected Gomez to do little even as L.A.-area priests bore witness to what was happening.
Father Gregory Boyle of Homeboy Industries appeared in a viral video proclaiming the righteous, if well-worn, message that no human being is illegal, but also that “we stand with anybody who’s demonized or left out, or excluded, or seen as disposable … it’s kinda how we roll here.” His fellow Jesuit, Dolores Mission pastor Brendan Busse, was there with activists during a June 9 migra raid at a factory in the Garment District that saw SEIU California president David Huerta arrested for civil disobedience.
I especially admired Father Peter O’Reilly, who was a priest in the L.A. Archdiocese for 44 years before retiring in 2005. The 90-year-old cleric was at Gloria Molina Grand Park on June 8, the day protesters torched Waymo cars, just blocks away from the Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels. O’Reilly told a television station in his native Ireland afterward that it was important for him be there to let immigrants know “we were with them and for them.”
Gomez? The archbishop put out a weak-salsa statement around that time about how he was “troubled” by the raids. His Instagram account urged people a few days later to light a candle and pray for peace. That same day, Diocese of Orange Bishop Kevin Vann and his auxiliary bishops posted a letter condemning the raids, which they maintained “invoke our worst instincts” and “spread crippling fear and anxieties upon the hard-working, everyday faithful among us.”
You know things are upside-down in this world when O.C. is more down for immigrant rights than L.A.
Faith leaders lead a prayer vigil in Gloria Molina Grand Park on June 10 to stand in support of community members facing immigration raids in Los Angeles.
(Jason Armond / Los Angeles Times)
I wanted to blast Gomez last week but held back, praying that he might change for the better. So I’m happy to report he’s starting to.
On June 10, the same day he posted his Instagram call for prayer, the archbishop also attended an evening interfaith vigil along with Boyle, Busse and other faith leaders to tell a crowd of over 1,000 people, “Immigration is about more than politics — it is about us, the kind of people we want to be.” Gomez asked all parishes in the L.A. Archdiocese the following day to hold special Masses with L.A.’s current immigration troubles in mind. He led the lunchtime one in the cathedral, telling parishioners during his homily, “We want to go out and console our neighbors and strengthen their hearts and encourage them to keep the faith.”
Gomez saved his most stinging remarks for this Tuesday in his regular column for Angelus News, the archdiocese’s publication. While not able to resist a shot at the Biden administration, the soft-spoken prelate nevertheless said of Trump’s raids: “This is not policy, it is punishment, and it can only result in cruel and arbitrary outcomes.” Accompanying his thoughts was a photo of a young woman holding a sign that read, “Jesus was an Immigrant” in front of California Highway Patrol officers in riot gear.
“For him to show up was meaningful,” Busse said. Since Trump’s inauguration, Dolores Mission has hosted training for the rapid response networks that have alerted people about immigration raids. “But I hope there’s more. The diocese has a huge capacity for organizing, and I hope that his leadership can move people in a large way.”
Busse said the first instinct of too many religious leaders is “to step back into a place of safety” when controversy emerges. “But there’s also an invitation to be brave and courageous. What we need to do is step into the situation to bring the peace that we’re praying for.”
Joseph Tómas McKellar is executive director of PICO California, a faith-based community organizing network that co-sponsored the interfaith vigil last week where Gomez spoke. The nonprofit used to teach citizenship and English classes in the L.A. Archdiocese and McKellar remembered Gomez attending a gathering of social justice groups in Modesto in 2017 as an active participant “in these small group conversations.”
The PICO California head said Gomez’s recent reemergence from his years in the political wilderness “was deeply encouraging. … Our bishops and the leaders of our denominations have a special responsibility to exercise prophetic leadership. The prophets are the ones who denounce what is broken in this world, but also announce a different vision. I do see him more embracing more that call and that challenge to reflect.”
An archdiocese spokesperson said Gomez was unavailable for comment because he was at a retreat for the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops. Earlier this week , the group released a reflection declaring, “No one can turn a deaf ear to the palpable cries of anxiety and fear heard in communities throughout the country in the wake of a surge in immigration enforcement activities.”
I have no expectations that Archbishop Gomez’s politics will ever fully reflect L.A.’s progressive soul. He remains the only American bishop affiliated with the orthodox Opus Dei movement and sits on the ecclesiastical advisory board for the Napa Institute, an organization of rich Catholics that has labored mightily over the past decade to tilt the church rightward. Its co-founder, Orange County-based multimillionaire developer Tim Busch, wrote earlier this year with no irony that Trump’s administration “is the most Christian I’ve ever seen” and told The Times in 2023 that Gomez “is one of my closest advisors.”
But I’m glad Gomez is moving in the right direction, right when the city needs him the most. I continue to pray his voice gets bolder and stronger and that the region’s millions of Catholics — and all Angelenos, for that matter — follow the archbishop’s call to action to help immigrants while pushing him to do more.
I hope Gomez keeps in his heart what Busse told me near the end of our chat: “If the faith community doesn’t stand up when there’s a moral issue to stand up for, then I don’t know what happens.”
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Commentary: ‘I’m speaking for those who can’t’: A daughter marches to honor her father
She was attending her first protest, driven to be seen with thousands of others at a “No Kings” demonstration Saturday morning in El Segundo, eager to make a statement.
But she was there for her father, as well.
The sign she held aloft as car horns honked in support said: “I’m speaking for those who can’t.”
Her father would have loved to join her, Jennifer told me. But with ICE raids in Los Angeles and arrests by the hundreds in recent days, her 55-year-old undocumented dad couldn’t afford to take the risk.
Steve Lopez
Steve Lopez is a California native who has been a Los Angeles Times columnist since 2001. He has won more than a dozen national journalism awards and is a four-time Pulitzer finalist.
Jennifer is 29. I hadn’t seen her in nearly 20 years, when I wrote about her father and visited her home in Inglewood to deliver $2,000 donated by readers who read his story.
Here’s the back story:
In December of 2005 I got a tip about a shooting in the front yard of an Inglewood home. Two men approached a landscaper and demanded money. He resisted, and in the tussle that ensued, a shot was fired.
Paramedics rushed the man to the emergency room at UCLA, where doctors determined that a bullet had just missed his heart and was lodged in his chest. Although doctors recommended he stay at least overnight for observation, he insisted he felt fine and needed to get back to work.
The landscaper, whom I referred to as Ray, insisted on leaving immediately. As he later explained to me, the Inglewood job was for a client who hired him to re-landscape the yard as a Christmas gift to his wife.
Ray was shot on Dec. 23.
Demonstrators at a “No Kings” event at Main Street and Imperial Highway in El Segundo on Saturday.
(Steve Lopez / Los Angeles Times)
He finished the job by Christmas.
I’ve been thinking about Ray since ICE agents began the crackdown ordered by President Trump, whose administration said its goal was to deport 3,000 people a day. Hundreds have been arrested in the Fashion District, at car washes and at building supply stores across Los Angeles.
That’s led to clashes between law enforcement and demonstrators, and to peaceful protests like the one along Imperial Highway and Main Street on Saturday in El Segundo.
I thought of Ray because Trump generally speaks of undocumented immigrants as monsters, and no doubt there are criminals among them.
But over the years, nearly all my encounters have been with the likes of Ray, who are an essential part of the workforce.
Yes, there are costs associated with undocumented immigrants, but benefits as well — they’ve been an essential part of the California economy for years. And among those eager to hire them — in the fields, in the hospitality industry, in slaughterhouses, in healthcare — are avid Trump supporters.
On Friday, I called Ray to see how he was doing.
“I’m worried about it,” he said, even though he has some protection.
Demonstrators at the “No Kings” event in El Segundo raise their signs, including one that read, “Real men don’t need parades.”
(Steve Lopez / Los Angeles Times)
Several years ago, an immigration attorney helped him get a permit to work, but the Trump administration has vowed to end temporary protected legal status for certain groups of immigrants.
“I see and hear about a lot of cases where they’re not respecting documents. People look Latino, and they get arrested,” said Ray, who is in the midst of a years-long process to upgrade his status.
Ray is still loading tools onto his truck and driving to landscaping, tree-trimming and irrigation jobs across L.A., as he’s done for more than 30 years. But he said he’s being extra careful.
A protester at a “No Kings” event in El Segundo prepares a sign on Saturday.
(Steve Lopez / Los Angeles Times)
“You know, like keeping an eye out everywhere and checking my telephone to see where checkpoints are,” he said.
Ray’s ex-wife has legal status, and all three of their children were born here and are U.S. citizens. The marriage ended and Ray has remarried, but he remains close to the three kids I met in the spring of 2006, when they were 9, 10 and 11.
The younger son, who is disabled, lives with Ray. His older son, a graphic designer, lives nearby. Jennifer, a job recruiter, lives next door and has been on edge in recent days.
“Even though he has permission to be here … it’s scary, and I wasn’t even letting him go to work,” Jennifer said. “On Monday I was getting into the shower and heard him loading up the truck.”
She ran outside to stop him, but he was already gone, so she called him and said, “Oh my God, you shouldn’t be going to work right now. It’s not safe.”
“No Kings” was the theme of the day during a demonstration in El Segundo on Saturday.
(Steve Lopez / Los Angeles Times)
Jennifer works from home but couldn’t concentrate that day. She used an app to track her father’s location and checked the latest information on ICE raids. So far, Ray has made it home safely each day, although Jennifer is hoping he slows down for a while.
Twenty years ago, when I wrote about Ray getting shot and his insistence on going back to work immediately, one of the readers who donated money — $1,000 — to him was one of his landscaping clients, Rohelle Erde. When I checked in with her this week to update her on Ray’s situation, she said her entire family came to the U.S. as immigrants to work hard and build a better life, and Ray did the same.
“He has been working and making money and helping people beautify their homes, creating beauty and order, and this must be so distressing,” Erde said. “The ugliness and disorder are exactly the opposite of what he represents.”
The evening before Saturday’s rally in El Segundo, Jennifer told me why she wanted to demonstrate:
“To show my face for those who can’t speak and to say we’re not all criminals, we’re all sticking together, we have each other’s backs,” she said. “The girl who takes care of my kids is undocumented and she’s scared to leave the house. I have a lot of friends and family in the same boat.”
Jennifer attended with her son, who’s 9 and told me he’s afraid his grandfather will be arrested and sent back to Mexico.
“He’s the age I was when you met me,” Jennifer said of her son.
She took in the crowd and said it was uplifting to see such a huge and diverse throng of people stand up, in peaceful protest, against authoritarianism and the militarization of the country.
Mother and son stood together, flashing their signs for passing motorists.
His said, “Families belong together.”
Jennifer told me that her father still has the bullet in his chest.
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Commentary: Sen. Alex Padilla’s crime? Being Mexican in MAGA America
When U.S. Sen. Alex Padilla was forcibly removed from a news conference held by Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, it was almost as if Donald Trump’s most well-worn talking point came to life:
A bad hombre tried to go after a white American.
All Padilla did was identify himself and try to question Noem about the immigration raids across Southern California that have led to protests and terror. Instead, federal agents pushed the senator into a hallway, forced him to the ground and handcuffed him before he was released. He and Noem talked privately afterward, yet she claimed to reporters that Padilla “lung[ed]” at her despite them being far apart and video showing no evidence to back up her laughable assertion.
(The claim was in keeping with Noem’s pronouncements this week. On Tuesday, she accused Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum of encouraging violent protests in L.A. when the president actually called for calm.)
The manhandling of Padilla on Thursday and his subsequent depiction by conservatives as a modern-day Pancho Villa isn’t surprising one bit. Trashing people of Mexican heritage has been one of Trump’s most successful electoral planks — don’t forget that he kicked off his 2016 presidential campaigns by proclaiming Mexican immigrants to be “rapists” and drug smugglers — because he knows it works. You could be a newcomer from Jalisco, you could be someone whose ancestors put down roots before the Mayflower, it doesn’t matter: For centuries, the default stance in this country is to look at anyone with family ties to our neighbor to the south with skepticism, if not outright hate.
It was the driving force behind the Mexican-American War and subsequent robbing of land from the Mexicans who decided to stay in the conquered territory. It was the basis for the legal segregation of Mexicans across the American Southwest in the first half of the 20th century and continues to fuel stereotypes of oversexed women and criminal men that still live on mainstream and social media.
These anti-Mexican sentiments are why California voters passed a slew of xenophobic local and state measures in the 1980s and 1990s when the state’s demographics began to dramatically change. Conservative politicians and pundits alike claimed Mexico was trying to reclaim the American Southwest and called the conspiracy the “Reconquista,” after the centuries-long push by Spaniards to take back the Iberian Peninsula from the Moors during the Middle Ages.
A man holds a Mexican flag at the Metropolitan Detention Center in Los Angeles on June 8, 2025.
(Jason Armond / Los Angeles Times)
The echoes of that era continue to reverberate in MAGAland. It’s why Trump went on social media to describe L.A. as a city besieged by a “Migrant Invasion” when people began to rally against all the immigration raids that kicked off last week and led to his draconian deployment of the National Guard and Marines to L.A. as if we were Fallouja in the Iraq war. It’s what led the White House’s Instagram account Wednesday to share the image of a stern-looking Uncle Sam putting up a poster stating “Help your country … and yourself” above the slogan “Report All Foreign Invaders” and a telephone number for Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
It’s what led U.S. Atty. Bill Essayli to post a photo on his official social media account of SEIU California President David Huerta roughed up and in handcuffs after he was arrested for allegedly blocking the path of ICE agents trying to serve a search warrant on a factory in the Garment District. It’s why Texas Gov. Greg Abbott called in the National Guard before planned protests in San Antonio, one of the cradles of Latino political power in the United States and the home of the Alamo. It’s why there are reports that Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth wants to rename a naval ship honoring Chicano legend Cesar Chavez and has announced that the only U.S. military base named after a Latino, Ft. Cavazos in Texas, will drop its name.
And it’s what’s driving all the rabid responses to activists waving the Mexican flag. Vice President JD Vance described protesters as “insurrectionists carrying foreign flags” on social media. White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller — Trump’s longtime anti-immigrant Iago — described L.A. as “occupied territory.” The president slimed protesters as “animals” and “foreign enemies.” In an address to Army soldiers prescreened for looks and loyalty at Ft. Bragg in North Carolina this week, he vowed, “The only flag that will wave triumphant over the city of Los Angeles is the American flag.”
The undue obsession with a piece of red, green and white cloth betrays this deep-rooted fear by Americans that we Mexicans are fundamentally invaders.
And to some, that idea sure seems to be true. Latinos are now the largest minority group in the U.S., a plurality in California and nearly a majority in L.A. and L.A. County — and Mexicans make up the largest segment of all those populations by far.
The truth of this demographic Reconquista, as I’ve been writing for a quarter of a century, is far more mundane.
Lupe Padilla, mother of then-Los Angeles City Councilman and current U.S. Sen. Alex Padilla, wipes a tear away as they watch a video presentation of his career during his last City Council meeting in 2006.
(Gary Friedman / Los Angeles Times)
The so-called invading force of my generation assimilated to the point where our kids are named Brandon and Ashley in all sorts of spellings. The young adults and teenagers on the street wrapping themselves in the Mexican flag right now are chanting against ICE in English and blasting “They Not Like Us.” More than a few of the National Guard troops, police officers and Homeland Security officers those young Latino activists were heckling have Latino surnames on their uniforms, when they show any identification at all. Hell, enough Mexican Americans voted for Trump that they arguably swung the election to him.
Mexicans assimilate into the United States, a fact too many Americans will never believe no matter how many American flags we may wave. The best personification of this reality is Sen. Padilla.
This son of Mexican immigrants grew up in working class Pacoima and went to MIT before returning home to help found a political machine that gave a voice to Latinos in the San Fernando Valley that they never had. He was the first Latino president of the L.A. City Council, served in both chambers of the state Legislature and also as California’s secretary of state before becoming California’s first Latino U.S. senator.
When I met Padilla for lunch last year at my wife’s store in Santa Ana — in Calle Cuatro, the city’s historic Latino district, where now we can see the National Guard down the street blocking off a part of it — he struck me as the goody- two-shoes those who have worked with him have always portrayed him to be. In fact, that was always a progressive critique of him: He was too nice to properly stand up to the Trump administration.
That’s what makes Padilla’s ejection especially outrageous. He’s California’s senior California U.S. senator, someone with enough of a security clearance to be was in the same federal building where Noem was holding her press conference because he had a previous meeting with US Northern Command’s General Gregory Guillot. Tall, brown and deep-voiced, Padilla is immediately recognizable on Capitol Hill as one of a handful of Latino U.S. senators. He fought Noem’s nomination to became Homeland Security chief, so it makes no sense that she didn’t immediately recognize him.
Then again, Noem probably thought Padilla was just another Mexican.
Not anymore. If anything, conservatives should be more afraid of Mexicans now than ever. Because if a nice Mexican such as Alex Padilla could be fed up with hate against us enough to get tossed around by the feds in the name of preserving democracy, anyone can.
May we all be bad hombres now.
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Commentary: Dodgers manager Dave Roberts is always the calm center during the storm
SAN DIEGO — Dave Roberts wasn’t pretending to be calm. He was calm.
None of this was new to him, the depleted starting rotation, the fatigued bullpen, the division rivals within striking distance.
Under similar circumstances in past seasons, Roberts pointed out, “We’ve gotten to the other side.”
The Dodgers won a World Series like this last year. They have won the National League West in 12 of the last 13 seasons.
They usually reach “the other side.”
So rather than panic, Roberts waits. He waits for the end of a particularly difficult 26-game stretch, and when Shohei Ohtani, Tyler Glasnow and Blake Snell can pitch again.
Roberts won’t say this publicly, but the Dodgers just have to tread water until they are whole.
They claimed a 5-2 victory over the San Diego Padres on Wednesday to win for the second time in their three-game series at Petco Park, preserving their lead in the NL West.
The Dodgers host the second-place San Francisco Giants in a three-game series that starts Friday and the third-place Padres in a four-game series that opens Monday, after which their schedule will become noticeably softer.
Their remaining opponents before the All-Star break: the Washington Nationals, Colorado Rockies, Kansas City Royals, Chicago White Sox, Houston Astros and Milwaukee Brewers. The post-All-Star Game schedule is extremely manageable as well.
Provided a couple of their starting pitchers return as anticipated, the Dodgers should be able to not just win their division but also secure a top-two seed in the NL, which would give them a first-round bye in the playoffs. As it is, the Dodgers are 41-27, only ½ game behind the Chicago Cubs, the league’s current No. 2 team.
Dodgers players have taken on Roberts’ understated confidence and make-do-with-what-you-have approach, which explains how the team has survived a 19-game stretch in which every opponent had a winning record. The Dodgers were 10-9 in those games.
“Character,” Roberts said.
Roberts specifically pointed to Teoscar Hernández, who broke out of a slump Wednesday to hit a key three-run home run; to Freddie Freeman, who he revealed is now dealing with a quadriceps injury in addition to his ankle problems; to Mookie Betts, who has continued to play high-level shortstop while playing with a broken toe.
“Guys are not running from the middle part of the season, the stretch we’re going through,” Roberts said. “We’re just finding ways to win.”
Teoscar Hernández circles the bases after his three-run homer.
(Derrick Tuskan / Associated Press)
The series win against the Padres was also a credit to Roberts’ ability, and willingness, to play the long game.
With Tony Gonsolin put on the injured list last week, the Dodgers were forced to schedule two bullpen games in San Diego. By punting on the first and refraining from using any of his go-to relievers in a loss, Roberts ensured his team would be positioned to win the series finale.
Again, this was nothing new, as Roberts basically forfeited games in both the NL Championship Series and World Series last year with the remainder of the series in mind.
Roberts elected to send opener Ben Casparius back to the mound to pitch a fourth inning on Wednesday rather than replace him with Jack Dreyer, whom Roberts has grown to trust. The extra inning made a difference. Lou Trivino pitched to the bottom of the Padres’ lineup in the fifth inning, allowing Roberts to deploy Dreyer against the heart of the order in the sixth.
When Michael Kopech walked the bases loaded in the seventh inning, Roberts responded with the necessary degree of urgency rather than allow the recently activated Kopech to try to pitch his way out of trouble. Roberts summoned Anthony Banda, who retired Luis Arráez and Manny Machado to maintain the Dodgers’ 4-2 advantage.
“The bullpen has certainly been used and pushed,” Roberts said. “I just think it speaks to the character.”
And it says something about the manager as well.
Roberts is now in his 10th season as the manager of the Dodgers. He has managed 1,426 games for them in the regular season and another 100 in the postseason. At this point, there’s not much he hasn’t seen, including what the team is dealing with now.
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Commentary: Why this overheated invasion of L.A. looks so ugly and feels so personal
I was driving while listening to the news Sunday when I heard House Speaker Mike Johnson justify President Trump’s move to send National Guard troops to Los Angeles.
“We have to maintain the rule of law,” Johnson said.
I almost swerved off the road.
Maintain the rule of law?
Steve Lopez
Steve Lopez is a California native who has been a Los Angeles Times columnist since 2001. He has won more than a dozen national journalism awards and is a four-time Pulitzer finalist.
Trump pardoned the hooligans who ransacked the Capitol because he lost the 2020 presidential election. They clashed with police, destroyed property and threatened the lives of public officials, and to Trump, they’re heroes.
Maintain the rule of law?
Trump is a 34-count felon who has defied judicial rulings, ignored laws that don’t serve his interests, and turned his current presidency into an unprecedented adventure in self-dealing and graft.
And now he’s sending an invading army to Los Angeles, creating a crisis where there was none. Arresting undocumented immigrants with criminal records is one thing, but is that what this is about? Or is it about putting on a show, occupying commercial and residential neighborhoods and arresting people who are looking for — or on their way to — work.
Protesters and members of the National Guard watched one another in front of the federal building in Los Angeles on Monday.
(Luke Johnson/Los Angeles Times)
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth warned that U.S. Marines were on high alert and ready to roll, and in the latest of who knows how many escalations, hundreds are headed our way.
What next, the Air Force?
I’m not going to defend the vandalism and violence — which plays into Trump’s hands—that followed ICE arrests in Los Angeles. I can see him sitting in front of the tube, letting out a cheer every time another “migrant criminal” flings a rock or a scooter at a patrol car.
But I am going to defend Los Angeles and the way things work here.
For starters, undocumented immigration is not the threat to public safety or the economy that Trump like to bloviate about.
It’s just that he knows he can score points on border bluster and on DEI (diversity, equity and inclusion), so he’s going full gasbag on both, and now he’s threatening to lock up Gov. Gavin Newsom.
To hear the rhetoric, you’d think every other undocumented immigrant is a gang member and that trans athletes will soon dominate youth sports if someone doesn’t stand up to them.
I can already read the mail that hasn’t yet arrived, so let me say in advance that I do indeed understand that breaking immigration law means breaking the law, and I believe that President Biden didn’t do enough to control the border, although it was Republicans who killed a border security bill early last year.
I also acknowledge the cost of supporting undocumented immigrants is substantial when you factor in public education and, in California, medical care, which is running billions of dollars beyond original estimates.
But the economic contributions of immigrants — regardless of legal status — are undeniably numerous, affecting the price we pay for everything from groceries to healthcare to domestic services to construction to landscaping.
Protesters shut down the 101 Freeway in Los Angeles on Sunday.
(Jason Armond/Los Angeles Times)
Last year, the Congressional Budget Office concluded that a surge in immigrants since 2021 — including refugees, asylum seekers and others, legal and illegal — had lifted the U.S. economy “by filling otherwise vacant jobs,” as The Times reported, and “pumping millions of tax dollars into state, local and federal coffers.”
According to a seminal 2011 study by the Public Policy Institute of California, “many illegal immigrants pay Social Security and other taxes but do not collect benefits, and they are not eligible for many government services.”
In addition, the report said: “Political controversies aside, when illegal immigrants come, many U.S. employers are ready to hire them. The vast majority work. Estimates suggest that at least 75 percent of adult illegal immigrants are in the workforce.”
Trump can rail against the lunatic radical left for the scourge of illegal immigration, but the statement that “employers are ready to hire them” couldn’t be more true. And those employers stand on both sides of the political aisle, as do lawmakers who for decades have allowed the steady flow of workers to industries that would suffer without them.
On Sunday, I had to pick up a couple of items at the Home Depot on San Fernando Road in Glendale, where dozens of day laborers often gather in search of work. But there were only a couple of men out there, given recent headlines.
A shopper in the garden section said the report of federal troops marching on L.A. is “kind of ridiculous, right?” He said the characterization by Trump of “all these terrible people” and “gang members” on the loose was hard to square with the reality of day laborers all but begging for work.
I found one of them in a far corner of the Home Depot lot, behind a fence. He told me he was from Honduras and was afraid to risk arrest by looking for work at a time when battalions of masked troops were on the move, but he’s got a hungry family back home, including three kids. He said he was available for any kind of jobs, including painting, hauling and cleanup.
Two men in a pickup truck told me they were undocumented too and available for construction jobs of any type. They said they were from Puebla, Mexico, but there wasn’t enough work for them there.
I’ve been to Puebla, a city known for its roughly 300 churches. I was passing through about 20 years ago on my way to a small nearby town where almost everyone on the street was female.
Where were the men?
Protesters shut down the 101 Freeway in Los Angeles on Sunday.
(Jason Armond/Los Angeles Times)
City workers repair broken windows at LAPD headquarters on Spring Street in downtown Los Angeles on Monday.
(Robert Gauthier/Los Angeles Times)
I was told by a city official that the local economy was all about corn, but local growers couldn’t compete with American farmers who had the benefit of federal subsidies. So the men had gone north for work.
Another reason people head north is to escape the violence wrought by cartels armed with American-made weapons, competing to serve the huge American appetite for drugs.
In these ways, and more, the flow of people across borders can be complicated. But generally speaking, it’s simply about survival. People move to escape poverty or danger. They move in search of something better for themselves, or to be more accurate about it, for their children.
The narratives of those journeys are woven into the fabric of Los Angeles. It’s part of what’s messy and splendid and complicated about this blended, imperfect corner of the world, where many of us know students or workers or families with temporary status, or none at all.
That’s why this overheated invasion looks so ugly and feels so personal.
We’re less suspicious of our neighbors and the people we encounter on our daily rounds than the hypocrites who would pardon insurrectionists, sow division and send an occupying army to haul away members of our community.
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Commentary: Three years away from the Olympics, L.A. is tripping over hurdles and trying to play catchup
Los Angeles is now a mere 12 months away from serving as primary host of the World Cup soccer championships, and three years away from taking the world stage as host of both the 2028 Summer Olympics and Paralympics.
Athletes and tourists by the tens of thousands will pour into the region from around the world, and I’m reminded of the classic film “Sunset Boulevard,” in which Gloria Swanson proclaimed, “I’m ready for my close-up.”
Will L.A. be ready for its close-up?
Steve Lopez
Steve Lopez is a California native who has been a Los Angeles Times columnist since 2001. He has won more than a dozen national journalism awards and is a four-time Pulitzer finalist.
That’s a question I intend to explore on a semi-regular basis, and you’re invited to worry and wonder along with me by sending your comments and questions to [email protected].
To let you know where I’m coming from, I’m a sports fan who watches the Olympics on television despite the politics, the doping scandals and the corporatization of the Games. But I’m also a professional skeptic, and my questions extend far beyond whether we’re ready for our close-up.
Here are just a few:
Will the benefits of hosting outweigh the burdens?
Will the average Southern Californian get anything out of the years-long buildup and staging of the Games?
And, will basic services and infrastructure near Olympic venues get upgrades at the expense of long-overdue improvements in other areas?
The answer to that question is a big “yes,” says L.A. Councilwoman Monica Rodriguez, who represents the northeastern San Fernando Valley.
“What I’ve seen in [the latest] budget is that those areas that will be hosting some of the Olympic events will be prioritized,” she said, and that means her district is off the radar.
It’s worth noting that the city of Los Angeles is not running these Olympics (that’s the job of LA28, a private nonprofit working in conjunction with the International Olympic Committee), nor is it hosting all the events. Olympic sites will be scattered well beyond Los Angeles proper, with volleyball in Anaheim, for instance, cricket in Pomona, cycling in Carson and swimming in Long Beach. Softball and canoe slalom competitions will be held in Oklahoma City.
Competitors dive into the Seine river at the start of the men’s 10km, marathon swimming, at the 2024 Summer Olympic Games in Paris.
(David Goldman / Associated Press)
But as lead host and a partner in the staging of mega-events that will draw an international spotlight, the reputation of the city of Los Angeles is on the line.
One financial advantage the 2028 Games will enjoy over previous Olympics is that there’s no need to erect any massive, ridiculously expensive new stadiums or arenas. There’ll be soccer at the Rose Bowl in Pasadena, track and field at the L.A. Coliseum and baseball at Dodger Stadium, for instance. All of which will keep the overall cost of the Games down.
But playing the part of primary Olympic host carries as many risks as opportunities.
“The Games have a history of damaging the cities and societies that host them,” according to an analysis last year in the Georgetown Journal of International Affairs, which cited “broken budgets that burden the public purse … the militarization of public spaces … and the expulsion of residents through sweeps, gentrifications and evictions.”
Even without all that, L.A. has a raft of problems on its hands, and the close-up at the moment is not a pretty portrait.
Tens of thousands of people are homeless, and the agency overseeing homelessness is in turmoil amid damning financial audits, so unless there’s a quick turnaround, the city will be draped in blue tarps for all the world to see. Meanwhile, planned transportation improvements are behind schedule, skyrocketing liability claim settlements are expected to cost $300 million this year, and on top of all that, it suddenly dawned on local leaders several weeks ago that the city was broke.
“Our budget situation is critical,” Mayor Karen Bass wrote in an April letter to the City Council, outlining a nearly $1-billion deficit and proposing numerous program cuts and layoffs.
The City Council restored some of those trims, but the outlook is still grim, with several hundred workers losing their jobs. Bass and other local leaders maintain that playing host to mega-events will help restock the treasury. But the opposite could be true, and if the $7-billion Games don’t break even, the already-strapped city will get slapped with a $270-million bailout tab.
For all the hand-wringing at City Hall, it’s not as if the current budget deficit should have come as a surprise. Revenue is down, the response to homelessness devours a big chunk of the budget (without transformational progress to show for the investment), and the bills keep coming due on the City Hall tradition of awarding public employee pay raises it can’t afford.
That’s why there’s a 10-year wait to get a ruptured sidewalk fixed (although the city is much quicker to pay millions in trip-and-fall cases), and there’s an estimated $2 billion in deferred maintenance at recreation and parks department facilities. At TorchedLA, journalist Alissa Walker reports that in an annual ranking of park systems in the largest 100 cities, L.A. has dropped to 90th, which she fairly called “a bad look for a city set to host the largest sporting events in the world.”
Speaking of bad looks, moving thousands of athletes and tourists around the city will be key to the success of the Games, but some of the so-called “28 by 28” transportation improvements slated for completion by the start of the Olympics have been dereailed or scaled back. And my colleague Colleen Shalby reported last month that Metro’s projected budget deficit over the next five years is massive:
“Critical parts of Metro’s Olympics plans are yet to be nailed down,” she wrote. “The agency has yet to confirm $2 billion in funds to lease nearly 3,000 buses, which are integral to Los Angeles’ transit-first goal for the Games.”
Babe Didrikson, right, clears the first hurdle on her way to winning the first heat of the women’s 80-meter hurdles during the 1932 Los Angeles Olympic Games at the Coliseum.
(Associated Press)
Michael Schneider, founder of the nonprofit Streets for All, said L.A.’s budget crisis “is coming at the worst possible time.” Not that the delivery of basic infrastructure needs should be tied to major sporting events, but he had hoped the Olympics would trigger a substantial investment in “bus rapid transit, a network of bike lanes, sidewalks that aren’t broken, curb ramps. Just the nuts and bolts of infrastructure.”
Jules Boykoff, a Pacific University professor and former professional soccer player who has studied the social and economic impacts of several recent Olympics, is not wowed by L.A.’s record so far.
“I thought Los Angeles was going to be in a lot better shape,” Boykoff said. “I’ve been taken aback by the problems that exist and how little has been done.”
The real goal isn’t just to host the Olympics, Boykoff said, but to do so in a way that delivers long-lasting improvements.
“Any smart city” uses the Games “to get gains for everybody in the city. Athens in 2004 got a subway system,” he said, Rio de Janeiro in 2016 got a transit link, and last year’s host, Paris, got a system of bike lanes.
L.A. had gold-medal aspirations, and the city has made some transit improvements. It’s also got a wealth of signature natural wonders to show off, from the mountains to the sea, just as the Paris Games featured the Eiffel Tower and the magical evening skyline.
But three big hurdles now stand in the way of making it to the podium:
The budget limitations (which could get worse between now and 2028), the diversion of resources to the Palisades wildfire recovery, and the uncertainty of desperately needed federal financial support from President Trump, who would probably not put Los Angeles on his list of favorite cities.
Races are sometimes won by runners making a move from the back of the pack, and L.A. could still find its stride, show some pride, and avoid embarrassing itself.
That’s what I’m rooting for.
But just one year away from the World Cup and three from the Olympics, the clock is ticking, and it’s almost too late to be playing catchup.
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Commentary: Hegseth’s move on USNS Harvey Milk is a stain on military’s ‘warrior ethos’
Of course, Trump’s Secretary of Defense wants the name of Harvey Milk, the murdered gay rights pioneer, stripped from a ship.
Never mind that Milk served in the Korean War as a diving instructor, eventually discharged because of his sexual orientation. Or that he had exhibited courage in facing down haters as the nation’s first publicly out elected official. After all, when Pete Hegseth’s not sending confidential war plans via Signal to people who shouldn’t be privy to them, he’s busy bloviating about the “warrior ethos.”
Hegseth is a military veteran, a National Guardsman who did tours in Iraq and Afghanistan. But he’s also someone who has made a career out of telling Americans he, above everyone else, knows what our veterans need and what our armed forces need to defend the U.S. in an increasingly volatile world. So Hegseth may know something about warriors and fighting. So did Milk.
But Hegseth is too busy playing Rambo to recognize it. Instead, he’s weaponizing bigotry to remake the U.S. military as a scorched-earth, hetero-Christian outfit ready to stamp out liberal heretics here and abroad. That’s not befitting anyone who calls themselves a warrior, no matter how many pseudo-patriotic tattoos and American flag items of clothing Hegseth loves to sport.
A true warrior follows a code of honor that allows respect to those they disagree with and sometimes even combat. For Hegseth to specifically ask that the USNS Harvey Milk have its name changed during Pride Month — the same month that he’s requiring all trans service people to out themselves and voluntarily leave their positions or be discharged against their will — does not represent the “reestablishing [of] the warrior culture” that the Navy is citing as the reason for the moves.
Instead, it reveals Hegseth’s Achilles heel, one he shares with Trump: a fundamental insecurity about their place in a country that diversified long ago.
CBS News is also reporting the Navy is recommending the renaming of ships named after civil rights icons Medgar Evers, Cesar Chavez, Sojourner Truth and Lucy Stone along with ships that haven’t yet been built but are scheduled to bear the names of Dolores Huerta, Thurgood Marshall, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Harriet Tubman.
Pentagon spokesperson Sean Parnell gave my colleague Kevin Rector the same malarkey he’s giving the rest of the media when asked for comment about this matter: That Hegseth is “committed” to making sure all named military assets “are reflective of the Commander-in-Chief’s priorities, our nation’s history, and the warrior ethos.”
Marine Col. Alison Thompson, left, talks with Jenn Onofrio, center, a White House Fellow to the secretary of the Navy and Patrik Gallineaux, right, of the Richmond/Ermet Aid Foundation prior to the launching of the USNS Harvey Milk, a fleet replenishment oiler ship named after the first openly gay elected official in 2021 in San Diego.
(Alex Gallardo / Associated Press)
I can understand the argument can be made that naval ships should be named only after those who served, which would eliminate people like Huerta, Ginsburg and Truth. But there was a beauty in the idea of having the names of civil rights heroes adorn ships in the so-called John Lewis class, oilers named after the late congressman. It was a reminder that wars don’t just happen on the front lines but also on the home front. That those who serve to defend our democracy don’t just do it through the military. That winning doesn’t just happen with bullets and bombs.
That sometimes, the biggest threat to our nation hasn’t been the enemy abroad, but the enemy within. It’s not just my wokoso opinion, either — the oath that all Navy newcomers and newly minted officers must take have them swear to “support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic.”
You might not associate Huerta, Truth, and Marshall with the military — indeed, I was surprised the Navy had honored them, period. But I and millions of Americans do remember them for fierceness in their respective battlegrounds, a steeliness any sailor should aspire to. For anyone in Hegseth’s world to even think about erasing their name is a disgrace to the Stars and Stripes — but what else should we expect from a department whose boss evaded military service by claiming to have debilitating bone spurs?
The striking of Milk’s name from an oiler, and proposed renaming of dry cargo ships named for Evers and Chavez, is particularly vile.
Milk joined the Navy in the footsteps of his parents. He was so proud of his military background that he was wearing a belt buckle with his Navy diver’s insignia the night he was assassinated. Evers was inspired to fight Jim Crow after serving in a segregated Army unit during World War II. Chavez, meanwhile, was stationed in the western Pacific shortly after the Good War during his two-year Navy stint.
I called up Andres Chavez, executive director of the National Chavez Center and grandson of Cesar, to hear how he was feeling about this mess. Andres was there in 2012 when the USNS Cesar Chavez was launched in San Diego, christened with a champagne bottle by Helen Chavez, Cesar’s widow and Andres’ grandmother. He said “it was probably the second-most memorable commemoration I’ve seen of my Tata after Obama” dedicated the Cesar E. Chavez National Monument in the Central Valley that year.
The USNS Cesar Chavez was the last of the Navy’s Lewis and Clark class of boats, all named after pioneers and explorers. Andres said his family was initially “hesitant” to have a naval ship named in honor of their patriarch “because so much of Cesar’s identity is wrapped up in nonviolence” but accepted when they found out the push came from shipyard workers from San Diego’s Barrio Logan.
“And there’s been so many Latinos who have served in the military in this country, so we accepted on behalf of them as well,” he said.
The Chavez family found out about the possibility of the USNS Cesar Chavez losing its name from reporters.
“We’re just gonna wait and see what’s next, but we’re not surprised by this administration anymore,” Andres said. “It’s just not an affront to Cesar; it’s an affront to all the Latino veterans of this country.”
He pushed back on Hegseth’s definition of what a warrior is by bringing up the work of his grandfather and Milk. The two supported each other’s causes in the 1970s and met “numerous” times, according to Andres.
“They served by creating more opportunities for other people and fighting for their respect,” he concluded. “That’s the definition of a warrior.”
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Commentary: Dodgers have lots of stars. Why Zach Neto should be Angels’ lone All-Star
The fans packed Angel Stadium last week, erupting when the star emerged from the dugout during pregame warmups, chanting “M-V-P” in his honor during the game.
Aaron Judge and the New York Yankees had arrived in Anaheim, and the old ballpark was abuzz.
“Anywhere we play,” Judge said, “it’s a playoff atmosphere.”
Angels fans haven’t seen a playoff game in 11 years, so there were plenty of good seats available for Yankees fans. In the top of the first inning, Judge grounded out.
In the bottom of the first, the Angels’ star strutted into the spotlight. Zach Neto led off the inning by launching a 440-foot home run — the longest of his career — and flipping his bat so dramatically that Major League Baseball celebrated on social media.
The Angels lost the game, but their shortstop rose to the occasion in a way his team so often has not. We would say Neto is a star in the making, with pop in his bat and swagger in his game, but he already is a star.
An All-Star.
“One hundred percent. For sure. No doubt,” said Angels closer Kenley Jansen, himself a four-time All-Star.
Baseball turns its All-Star ballot live Wednesday, and there is no shortage of Dodgers players worthy of votes. If Judge does not get the most votes overall, Shohei Ohtani should.
Freddie Freeman entered play Tuesday batting .368, and he leads National League first basemen in WAR. Will Smith is batting .331 and leads NL catchers in WAR. Shortstop Mookie Betts and outfielder Teoscar Hernández figure to attract some votes, and Yoshinobu Yamamoto should be one of the pitchers selected.
The Dodgers had six All-Stars last year. The Angels had one: pitcher Tyler Anderson.
This year, Neto ought to be that guy. His 10 home runs lead American League shortstops. Among all major leaguers, only Ohtani has more leadoff homers than Neto.
“It’s a no-brainer he is our All-Star this year,” Jansen said.
Angels shortstop Zach Neto high-fives a fan before a game against the Marlins at Angel Stadium in May 24.
(Gina Ferazzi / Los Angeles Times)
Neto is one of seven major leaguers with 30 home runs and 30 stolen bases in their last 162 games. The others: Ohtani, Ronald Acuña Jr., Corbin Carroll, Francisco Lindor, José Ramírez and Kyle Tucker.
Lindor is the only other shortstop in the group. That makes Neto a star in a rather bright constellation.
“He’s a superstar in the making,” Jansen said.
Neto almost certainly would need to be voted in by his peers, or selected by the league office. Even his manager admits Neto has virtually no chance to be voted in by the fans.
Angels manager Ron Washington said Neto is “definitely” an All-Star but suggested Bobby Witt Jr. of the Kansas City Royals, the runner-up to Judge as AL most valuable player last season, would be voted the starting shortstop.
“I think he is going to be the guy,” Washington said.
And Neto?
“They need some backup,” Washington said. “It doesn’t matter if you make the All-Star team as a backup. You made the All-Star team.
“I think he’s got the opportunity to do just that.”
Angels shortstop Zach Neto gives the safe sign as he slides on his belly across home plate ahead of the tag during a game against the Giants in April.
(Wally Skalij / Associated Press)
Gunnar Henderson of the Baltimore Orioles started at shortstop for the AL last season. Jeremy Peña of the Houston Astros has a better WAR than anyone in the AL except Judge, according to Baseball Reference. Jacob Wilson of the Athletics has a better OPS than Witt, and he is batting .355 — better than anyone in the majors besides Judge and Freeman.
“With all the shortstops out there, he is just going to have to bide his time,” Washington said of Neto. “Hopefully, he gets chosen.”
The fans select the starters, and the players in the AL and NL select the backups in their respective leagues. If the fans vote Witt, do enough AL players appreciate Neto’s game?
“Yeah,” Washington said, laughing, “because he bust their [butt].”
Said Dodgers manager Dave Roberts: “Love him. Certainly, his skill set plays. And, for him to be — what, a couple years removed from college? — I just love that he just has that feel for leadership. He’s already a leader. I can see it from the other side.
“He’s sort of like that old-school gritty ballplayer. He can beat you a lot of ways. He’s quickly going higher on the list of players I love to watch.”
The league office completes the All-Star rosters, in large part to ensure each team has at least one representative. It is not a given that Neto would be the Angels’ representative.
If two or three other shortstops are chosen, the league office could opt for catcher Logan O’Hoppe or, if position players are fully stocked, pitcher Yusei Kikuchi. If Mike Trout stays healthy and gets hot, the league office could give fans across America the Angels player they would most want to see.
Yet there is no question that Neto is the Angels’ best player this year, and a star for years to come.
“This guy,” Roberts said, “is going to be an All-Star for a long time.”
That time should start now.
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Commentary: If people taking care of our elders get deported, will anyone take their place?
She rides three buses from her Panorama City home to her job as a caregiver for an 83-year-old Sherman Oaks woman with dementia, and lately she’s been worrying about getting nabbed by federal agents.
When I asked what she’ll do if she gets deported, B., who’s 60 and asked me to withhold her name, paused to compose herself.
“I don’t want to cry,” she said, but losing her $19 hourly job would be devastating, because she sends money to the Philippines to support her family.
Steve Lopez
Steve Lopez is a California native who has been a Los Angeles Times columnist since 2001. He has won more than a dozen national journalism awards and is a four-time Pulitzer finalist.
The world is getting grayer each day thanks to an epic demographic wave. In California, 22% of the state’s residents will be 65 and older by 2040, up by 14% from 2020.
“At a time where it seems fewer and fewer of us want to work in long-term care, the need has never been greater,” Harvard healthcare policy analyst David C. Grabowski told The Times’ Emily Alpert Reyes in January.
So how will millions of aging Americans be able to afford care for physical and cognitive decline, especially given President Trump’s big beautiful proposed cuts to Medicaid, which covers about two-thirds of nursing home residents? And who will take care of those who don’t have family members who can step up?
A building where multiple caregivers live in a cramped studio apartment in Panorama City.
(Jason Armond / Los Angeles Times)
There are no good answers at the moment. Deporting care providers might make sense if there were a plan to make the jobs more attractive to homegrown replacements, but none of us would bet a day-old doughnut on that happening.
Nationally and in California, the vast majority of workers in care facilities and private settings are citizens. But employers were already having trouble recruiting and keeping staff to do jobs that are low-paying and difficult, and now Trump administration policies could further shrink the workforce.
Earlier this year, the administration ordered an end to programs offering temporary protected status and work authorization, and the latest goal in Trump’s crackdown on illegal immigration is to make 3,000 arrests daily.
“People are worried about the threat of deportation … but also about losing whatever job they have and being unable to secure other work,” said Aquilina Soriano Versoza, director of the Pilipino Workers Center, who estimated that roughly half of her advocacy group’s members are undocumented.
In the past, she said, employers didn’t necessarily ask for work authorization documents, but that’s changing. And she fears that given the political climate, some employers will “feel like they have impunity to exploit workers,” many of whom are women from Southeast Asia, Africa, the Caribbean, Mexico and Latin America.
That may already be happening.
“We’ve seen a lot of fear, and we’ve seen workers who no longer want to pursue their cases” when it comes to fighting wage theft, said Yvonne Medrano, an employment rights lawyer with Bet Tzedek, a legal services nonprofit.
A gathering at the Pilipino Workers Center in Los Angeles in Historic Filipinotown. Aquilina Soriano Versoza, director of the center, says, “People are worried about the threat of deportation … but also about losing whatever job they have and being unable to secure other work.”
(Ringo Chiu / For The Times)
Medrano said the workers are worried that pursuing justice in the courts will expose them to greater risk of getting booted out of the country. In one case, she said, a worker was owed a final paycheck for a discontinued job, but the employer made a veiled threat, warning that showing up to retrieve it could be costly.
Given the hostile environment, some workers are giving up and going home.
“We’ve seen an increase in workers self-deporting,” Medrano said.
Conditions for elder care workers were bleak enough before Trump took office. Two years ago, I met with documented and undocumented caregivers and although they’re in the healthcare business, some of them didn’t have health insurance for themselves.
I met with a cancer survivor and caregiver who was renting a converted garage without a kitchen. And I visited an apartment in Panorama City where Josephine Biclar, in her early 70s, was struggling with knee and shoulder injuries while still working as a caregiver.
Biclar was sharing a cramped studio with two other caregivers. They used room dividers to carve their space into sleeping quarters. When I checked with Biclar this week, she said four women now share the same space. All of them have legal status, but because of low wages and the high cost of housing, along with the burden of supporting families abroad, they can’t afford better living arrangements.
B. and another care provider share a single room, at a cost of $400 apiece, from a homeowner in Panorama City. B. said her commute takes more than an hour each way, and during her nine-hour shift, her duties for her 83-year-old client include cooking, feeding and bathing.
She’s only working three days a week at the moment and said additional jobs are hard to come by given her status and the immigration crackdown. She was upset that for the last two months, she couldn’t afford to send any money home.
“People are worried about the threat of deportation, but also about losing whatever job they have and being unable to secure other work, said Aquilina Soriano Versoza, executive director of the Pilipino Workers Center.
(Christina House / Los Angeles Times)
Retired UCLA scholar Fernando Torres-Gil, who served as President Clinton’s assistant secretary on aging, said “fear and chaos” in the elder care industry are not likely to end during this presidential administration. And given budget constraints, California will be hard-pressed to do more for caregivers and those who need care.
But he thinks the growing crisis could eventually lead to an awakening.
“We’re going to see more and more older folks without long-term care,” Torres-Gil said. “Hopefully, Democrats and Republicans will get away from talking about open borders and talk about selective immigration” that serves the country’s economic and social needs.
The U.S. is not aging alone, Torres-Gil pointed out. The same demographic shifts and healthcare needs are hitting the rest of the world, and other countries may open their doors to workers the U.S. sends packing.
“As more baby boomers” join the ranks of those who need help, he said, “we might finally understand we need some kind of leadership.”
It’s hard not to be cynical these days, but I’d like to think he’s onto something.
Meanwhile, I’m following leads and working different angles on this topic. If you’re having trouble finding or paying for care, or if you’re on the front lines as a provider, I’m hoping you will drop me a line.
[email protected]
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Commentary: Guess who suddenly has a ‘TACO’ allergy? How a tasty sounding acronym haunts Trump
Guess who suddenly has a “TACO” allergy? President Yuge Taco Salad himself.
In the annals of four-letter words and acronyms Donald Trump has long hitched his political fortunes on, the word “taco” may be easy to overlook.
There’s MAGA, most famously. DOGE, courtesy of Elon Musk. Huge (pronounced yuge, of course). Wall, as in the one he continues to build on the U.S.-Mexico border. “Love” for himself, “hate” against all who stand in his way.
There’s a four-letter term, however, that best sums up Trump’s shambolic presidency, one no one would’ve ever associated with him when he announced his first successful presidential campaign a decade ago.
Taco.
His first use of the most quintessential of Mexican meals happened on Cinco de Mayo 2016, when Trump posted a portrait of himself grinning in front of a giant taco salad while proclaiming “I Love Hispanics!” Latino leaders immediately ridiculed his Hispandering, with UnidosUS president Janet Murguia telling the New York Times that it was “clueless, offensive and self-promoting” while also complaining, “I don’t know that any self-respecting Latino would even acknowledge that a taco bowl is part of our culture.”
I might’ve been the only Trump critic in the country to defend his decision to promote taco salads. After all, it’s a dish invented by a Mexican American family at the old Casa de Fritos stand in Disneyland. But also because the meal can be a beautiful, crunchy thing in the right hands. Besides, I realized what Trump was doing: getting his name in the news, trolling opponents, and having a hell of a good time doing it while welcoming Latinos into his basket of deplorables as he strove for the presidency. Hey, you couldn’t blame the guy for trying.
Guess what happened?
Despite consistently trashing Latinos, Trump increased his share of that electorate in each of his presidential runs and leaned on them last year to capture swing states like Arizona and Nevada. Latino Republican politicians made historic gains across the country in his wake — especially in California, where the number of Latino GOP legislators jumped from four in 2022 to a record nine.
The Trump taco salad tweet allowed his campaign to present their billionaire boss to Latinos as just any other Jose Schmo ready to chow down on Mexican food. It used the ridicule thrown at him as proof to other supporters that elites hated people like them. Trump must have at least felt confident the taco salad gambit from yesteryear worked because he reposted the image on social media this Cinco de Mayo, adding the line “This was so wonderful, 9 years ago today!”
It’s not exactly live by the taco, die by the taco. (Come on, why would such a tasty force of good want to hurt anyone)? But Trump is suddenly perturbed by the mere mention of TACO.
Doritos Locos Tacos at the Taco Bell Laguna Beach location.
(Don Leach/Daily Pilot)
That’s an acronym mentioned in a Financial Times newsletter earlier this month that means Trump Always Chickens Out. The insult is in reference to the growing belief in Wall Street that people who invest in stocks should keep in mind that the president talks tough on tariffs but never follows through because he folds under pressure like the Clippers. Or a taco, come to think of it.
Trump raged when CNBC reporter Megan Cassella asked him about TACO at a White House press conference this week.
“Don’t ever say what you said,” the commander in chief snarled before boasting about how he wasn’t a chicken and was actually a tough guy. “That’s a nasty question.”
No other reporter followed up with TACO questions, because the rest of the internet did. Images of Trump in everything from taco suits to taco crowns to carnivorous tacos swallowing Trump whole have bloomed ever since. News outlets are spreading Trump’s out-of-proportion response to something he could’ve just laughed off, while “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” just aired a parody song to the tune of “Macho Man” titled — what else? — “Taco Man.”
The TACO coinage is perfect: snappy, easily understandable, truthful and seems Trump-proof. The master of appropriating insults just can’t do anything to make TACO his — Trump Always Cares Outstandingly just doesn’t have the same ring. It’s also a reminder that Trump’s anti-Latino agenda so far in his administration makes a predictable mockery of his taco salad boast and related Hispandering.
In just over four months, Trump and his lackeys have tried to deport as many Latino immigrants — legal and illegal — as possible and has threatened Mexico — one of this country’s vital trading partners — with a 25% tariff. He has signed executive orders declaring English the official language of the United States and seeking to bring back penalties against truck drivers who supposedly don’t speak English well enough at a time when immigrants make up about 18% of the troquero force and Latinos are a big chunk of it.
Meanwhile, the economy — the main reason why so many Latinos went for Trump in 2024 in the first place — hasn’t improved since the Biden administration and always seems one Trump speech away from getting even wobblier.
As for Latinos, there are some signs Trump’s early presidency has done him no great favors with them. An April survey by the Pew Research Center — considered the proverbial gold standard when it comes to objectively gauging how Latinos feel about issues — found 27% of them approve of how he’s doing as president, down from 36% back in February.
President Trump gives a thumbs up to the cheering crowd after a Latinos for Trump Coalition roundtable in Phoenix in 2020.
(Ross D. Franklin / Associated Press)
Trump was always an imperfect champion of the taco’s winning potential, and not because the fish tacos at his Trump Grill come with French fries (labeled “Idaho” on the menu) and the taco salad currently costs a ghastly $25. He never really understood that a successful taco must appeal to everyone, never shatter or rip apart under pressure and can never take itself seriously like a burrito or a snooty mole.
The president needs to move on from his taco dalliance and pay attention to another four-letter word, one more and more Americans utter after every pendejo move Trump and his flunkies commit:
Help.
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Commentary: Back in the news, Albert ‘Little Al’ Robles still has a lot of bones to pick
When the world calls you “Little Al,” you’re going to do what it takes to be seen.
That’s what I thought after spending an hour last week at the Porsche Experience Center in Carson with the city’s former mayor, Albert Robles.
He’s not the Albert Robles who was found guilty 19 years ago of fleecing South Gate out of $20 million as treasurer — that’s Big Al Robles. Little Al is the one who has tried to be a political somebody in L.A. County for over 30 years, only to almost always fall short, his career careening from one controversy to another.
In 2006, he represented three men who moved to Vernon in an attempt to take over the City Council; they all lost. That same year, Little Al represented Big Al — no, they’re not actually related — at the latter’s sentencing and argued that his client deserved leniency since what he did was common in California politics. The presiding judge replied, “What you have just said is among the most absurd things I have ever heard.”
Then-Carson Mayor Al Robles during a Carson City Council meeting at City Hall in 2015.
(Los Angeles Times)
The year after he was elected Carson’s mayor in 2015, the Fair Political Practices Commission fined Robles $12,000 to resolve allegations of campaign finance law violations. Two years after that, Robles’ 24-year tenure on the board of directors for Water Replenishment District of Southern California — an obscure agency that provides water for 44 cities in L.A. County — ended after a Superior Court judge ruled he couldn’t hold that seat at the same time that he was serving as mayor.
He lost the mayoral seat in the 2020 general election after striking out in his bid for county supervisor in the primary election earlier that year. Robles has been unsuccessful in two other races since — for an L.A. County Superior Court seat in 2022, and a state Senate primary last year where he garnered just 8.5% of the vote.
“I keep thinking I’m done and then I’m not done,” the 56-year-old joked at one point in our conversation as Caymans and Carreras roared through the test track as we lounged in a nearby patio. “It’s kind of like they dragged me back in.”
We met to talk about his latest waltz with the headlines: He’s the lawyer for former Huntington Park Councilmember Esmeralda Castillo. She’s suing the city to get her seat back after an internal investigation found Castillo wasn’t a resident of the southeast L.A. County suburb. The council declared the seat vacant and then picked a replacement.
“Whether or not she lives in [Huntington Park], whether or not she’s an angel, whether or not she’s Charles Manson, that doesn’t matter: She was denied the process that all of us are entitled to,” Robles said.
Um, Manson?
He’s also representing another former Huntington Park council member, Valentin Amezquita, in another lawsuit against the city. That one demands the city hold a special election for Castillo’s former seat, which Amezquita unsuccessfully applied for.
Wait, aren’t the lawsuits contradicting each other?
A judge told him the same thing, Robles admitted. He told me he filed them to expose what he described as Huntington Park’s “hypocrisy” for supposedly following the city charter over the Castillo matter, but ignoring it when choosing her replacement.
“It’s just like what’s happening at the federal level, as far as I see it,” Robles grumbled. Earlier, he compared the lack of due process Castillo allegedly faced to Kilmar Abrego Garcia, the Salvadoran national illegally deported by the Trump administration to his home country. “It’s frustrating.”
The more he talked, the more it became evident Robles wants to be seen as the crusader he’s always imagined himself to be and is annoyed that he’s not.
Carson Mayor Albert Robles speaks during a hearing about a proposed $480-million desalination plant in El Segundo in 2019 at the Carson Event Center.
(Dania Maxwell / Los Angeles Times)
His grievances are many.
He continues to hold a grudge against former L.A. County Dist. Atty. Steve Cooley, whom he described as “corrupt … and I’ll call him that to his face.” Cooley, for his part, told The Times in 2013 that when Robles unsuccessfully ran against him in 2008, he was “probably the most unqualified candidate ever” because of his political past.
Robles bragged that he torpedoed Cooley’s career.
“It’s an exaggeration — over-embellishment — on my part, but I actually take credit for” Cooley losing his 2010 bid to become California attorney general. “Because when I ran against him, I caused him to spend money — money that he otherwise would have had for the AG race. And if [Cooley] had that additional half a million dollars that he had to spend for the DA race, he may have won.”
He thinks Latino politicians need to close ranks like he feels other ethnicities do.
Case in point: Operation Dirty Pond, an L.A. County district attorney probe into a long-delayed Huntington Park aquatic park. In February, investigators raided City Hall and the homes of seven individuals, including two former council members and two current ones. Robles said the probe doesn’t “make sense” and is further proof that Latino politicians are held to a higher standard than other politicians.
“If Esmeralda were Black or Asian, or hell — dare I say — even white, I think it would be reported differently. I honestly believe that. Because those communities are willing to set aside their differences for the better good, because they know that, hey, if one person is being mistreated, we all are.”
Once he realized I wanted to discuss his own political travails as much as of his clients, Robles said the better setting for our chat would’ve been the Albert Robles Center, a water treatment center in Pico Rivera that opened in 2019.
“That structure, you know, everyone loves it now. Everyone celebrates that it’s there. But surprise, surprise: not one environmental group, not one came out and supported our effort to build it up. … Nobody fought more for that building, for that project, than me.”
This set off more grievances.
Robles was bitter that L.A.’s “Latino power elite” hadn’t listened to him and invested more time and effort in the South Bay, where Latinos make up a majority of the population in many cities but have little political representation.
“They just see us as differently and the resources to organize and build up that political power base never materialized,” he said. “I don’t know if they see it as ‘Oh, those are more affluent communities, they don’t need our help.’ I don’t know.”
He was also “disheartened” by Black residents that opposed district elections in Carson that would have probably brought more Latinos onto the council. They were introduced in 2020 after a lawsuit alleged Latino voters were disenfranchised in the city. Since then, there hasn’t been a Latino elected to the City Council.
“We would have members of the African American community come up and say, ‘Well, we have a Latino mayor. We don’t need districts. Latinos should vote — stop speaking Spanish, and learn to vote.’ And then I would say, ‘You know, everything you’re saying is what whites said about Blacks in the South. And they’re like, ‘That’s not true.’ So, like, some forgot their history and now we seem to have fallen into the politics of, ‘If it’s not us, it can’t be them.’”
We climbed upstairs to the Porsche Experience Center’s viewing deck so Robles could pose for photos. Workers at the venue’s restaurant greeted him, drawing the first genuine smile Robles had flashed all afternoon.
He then mentioned that somewhere in the building was his name. I thought it would be on a plaque commemorating the debut of the Porsche Experience Center in 2016, when Robles was mayor. But it turned out to be his John Hancock alongside a bunch of others on a whiteboard in a room facing the parking lot.
The room was locked.
Robles wondered out loud if he should ask the staff to open it so we could take a better look. Instead, we peered through a window.
“It’s right there,” he told me, trying to describe where exactly it was among all the other signatures. “Well, you’re not familiar with it so you probably can’t see it.”
He could.
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